Sample records for solar wind regime

This study compares the designation of different solarwind flow regimes (transient, coronal hole, and streamer belt) according to two algorithms derived from observations by the SolarWind Ion Composition Spectrometer, the SolarWind Electron Proton Alpha Monitor, and the Magnetometer on the ACE spacecraft, with a similar regime determination performed on board the Genesis spacecraft. The comparison is made for the interval from late 2001 to early 2004 when Genesis was collecting solarwind ions for return to Earth. The agreement between hourly regime assignments from any pair of algorithms was less than two thirds, while the simultaneous agreement between all three algorithms was only 49%. When the results of the algorithms were compared to a catalog of interplanetary coronal mass ejection events, it was found that almost all the events in the catalog were confirmed by the spacecraft algorithms. On the other hand, many short transient events, lasting 1 to 13 h, that were unanimously selected as transient like by the algorithms, were not included in the catalog.

Solarwind turbulence is characterized by a Kolmogorovian magnetic fluctuations spectrum at large scales followed by a second inertial range with steeper spectra associated with nonlinear dispersive processes. Recent observations reveal the presence of a third region -- called dissipation range -- at scales smaller than the electron inertial length and characterized by steeper spectra. We investigate this regime in the electron magnetohydrodynamics approximation and discuss the possibility to derive an exact and universal law for third-order structure functions. This law corresponds to a magnetic fluctuations isotropic spectrum in k-11/3 compatible with the observations. We conclude on the possible existence of a third turbulence regime in the solarwind instead of a dissipation range as recently postulated.

Full Text Available The solarwind properties depend on λ, the heliomagnetic latitude with respect to the heliospheric current sheet (HCS, more than on the heliographic latitude. We analyse the wind properties observed by Wind at 1 AU during about 2.5 solar rotations in 1995, a period close to the last minimum of solar activity. To determine λ, we use a model of the HCS which we fit to the magnetic sector boundary crossings observed by Wind. We find that the solarwind properties mainly depend on the modulus |λ|. But they also depend on a local parameter, the total pressure (magnetic pressure plus electron and proton thermal pressure. Furthermore, whatever the total pressure, we observe that the plasma properties also depend on the time: the latitudinal gradients of the wind speed and of the proton temperature are not the same before and after the closest HCS crossing. This is a consequence of the dynamical stream interactions. In the low pressure wind, at low |λ|, we find a clear maximum of the density, a clear minimum of the wind speed and of the proton temperature, a weak minimum of the average magnetic field strength, a weak maximum of the average thermal pressure, and a weak maximum of the average β factor. This overdense sheet is embedded in a density halo. The latitudinal thickness is about 5° for the overdense sheet, and 20° for the density halo. The HCS is thus wrapped in an overdense sheet surrounded by a halo, even in the non-compressed solarwind. In the high-pressure wind, the plasma properties are less well ordered as functions of the latitude than in the low-pressure wind; the minimum of the average speed is seen before the HCS crossing. The latitudinal thickness of the high-pressure region is about 20°. Our observations are qualitatively consistent with the numerical model of Pizzo for the deformation of the heliospheric current sheet and plasma sheet.

Recent observations of the solarwind have pointed out the existence of a cascade of magnetic energy from the scale of the proton Larmor radius ρ(p) down to the electron Larmor radius ρ(e) scale. In this Letter we study the spatial properties of magnetic field fluctuations in the solarwind and find that at small scales the magnetic field does not resemble a sea of homogeneous fluctuations, but rather a two-dimensional plane containing thin current sheets and discontinuities with spatial sizes ranging from l >/~ ρ(p) down to ρ(e) and below. These isolated structures may be manifestations of intermittency that localize sites of turbulent dissipation. Studying the relationship between turbulent dissipation, reconnection, and intermittency is crucial for understanding the dynamics of laboratory and astrophysical plasmas.

Recent observations of the solarwind have pointed out the existence of a cascade of magnetic energy from the scale of the proton Larmor radius ρp down to the electron Larmor radius ρe scale. In this Letter we study the spatial properties of magnetic field fluctuations in the solarwind and find that at small scales the magnetic field does not resemble a sea of homogeneous fluctuations, but rather a two-dimensional plane containing thin current sheets and discontinuities with spatial sizes ranging from l≳ρp down to ρe and below. These isolated structures may be manifestations of intermittency that localize sites of turbulent dissipation. Studying the relationship between turbulent dissipation, reconnection, and intermittency is crucial for understanding the dynamics of laboratory and astrophysical plasmas.

Recent spacecraft observations of solarwind magnetic field fluctuations have shown the existence of a cascade of magnetic energy from the scale of the proton Larmor radius ρ_cp, where kinetic properties of ions invalidate fluid approximations, down to the electron Larmor radius ρ_ce, where electrons become demagnetized. This energy cascade has been conjectured to consist of highly oblique kinetic Alfvénic fluctuations (KAW) that are dissipated by proton and electron Landau damping. Analyzing the 450 vec/s resolution data from the STAFF search-coil magnetometer on Cluster, we report, for the first time, evidence for the existence in the solarwind of thin current sheets and discontinuities that exhibit spatial scales that range from the proton Larmor scale down to the electron Larmor scale. In the cases studied, the current sheets are very localized and have an extent between 20-200 km, size that is often close to both the proton Larmor radius and the proton inertial length. These isolated structures appear to be a manifestation of intermittency and may localize sites turbulent dissipation. Furthermore, we compare in-situ observations of thin current sheets and discontinuities in the solarwind at proton scales with results that come from two-dimensional Hall MHD turbulence simulations in the presence of a strong guide field. The initial condition in the simulations is a large scale flux rope structure which breaks down into smaller and smaller current sheets due to the turbulent energy transfer. The comparison shows good qualitative agreement between the properties of the structures observed in Cluster data and the properties of current sheets that arise in the simulations. Our results highlight two competing processes that contribute to the dissipation of solarwind turbulence when the plasma beta is of order unity; viz., kinetic (Landau) damping by protons and electrons and the general tendency of the cascade to form thin current sheets where reconnection and

A useful rule of thumb in solar terrestrial studies is that the solarwind travels 4 Earth radii (RE) per minute. Long-term studies of solarwind velocity [e.g., Luhmann et al., 1993; 1994] show that the median velocity is about 420 km/s, corresponding to 3.96 RE min-1. The quartiles are about 370 km/s and 495 km/s, corresponding to 3.48 Re min-1 and 4.66 Re min-1 respectively. This number helps estimate the delays expected when observing a discontinuity at a solarwind monitor; one example is ISEE-3 when it was at the forward libration point (about 60 min). It is also helpful for estimating how much time passes before the dayside magnetosphere is compressed as denser solarwind flows by (about 2.5 min).

Aims: We study the acceleration of the stellar winds of rapidly rotating low mass stars and the transition between the slow magnetic rotator and fast magnetic rotator regimes. We aim to understand the properties of stellar winds in the fast magnetic rotator regime and the effects of magneto-centrifugal forces on wind speeds and mass loss rates. Methods: We extend a solarwind model to 1D magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the winds of rotating stars. We test two assumptions for how to scale the wind temperature to other stars and assume the mass loss rate scales as dot{M_star ∝ R_star2 Ω_star1.33 M_star-3.36}, in the unsaturated regime, as estimated from observed rotational evolution. Results: For 1.0 M⊙ stars, the winds can be accelerated to several thousand km s-1, and the effects of magneto-centrifugal forces are much weaker for lower mass stars. We find that the different assumptions for how to scale the wind temperature to other stars lead to significantly different mass loss rates for the rapid rotators. If we assume a constant temperature, the mass loss rates of solar mass stars do not saturate at rapid rotation, which we show to be inconsistent with observed rotational evolution. If we assume the wind temperatures scale positively with rotation, the mass loss rates are only influenced significantly at rotation rates above 75 Ω⊙. We suggest that models with increasing wind speed for more rapid rotators are preferable to those that assume a constant wind speed. If this conclusion is confirmed by more sophisticated wind modelling. it might provide an interesting observational constraint on the properties of stellar winds. All of the codes and output data used in this paper can be downloaded from http://https://zenodo.org/record/160052#.V_y6drWkVC1 or obtained by contacting the author.

Aims: We study the acceleration of the stellar winds of rapidly rotating low mass stars and the transition between the slow magnetic rotator and fast magnetic rotator regimes. We aim to understand the properties of stellar winds in the fast magnetic rotator regime and the effects of magneto-centrifugal forces on wind speeds and mass loss rates. Methods: We extend the solarwind model of Johnstone et al. (2015b) to 1D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the winds of rotating stars. We test two assumptions for how to scale the wind temperature to other stars and assume the mass loss rate scales as Mdot ~ Rstar^2 OmegaStar^1.33 Mstar^-3.36, in the unsaturated regime, as estimated by Johnstone et al. (2015a). Results: For 1.0 Msun stars, the winds can be accelerated to several thousand km/s, and the effects of magneto-centrifugal forces are much weaker for lower mass stars. We find that the different assumptions for how to scale the wind temperature to other stars lead to significantly different mass loss ra...

The acceleration and heating of the solarwind have been studied for decades using satellite observations and models. However, the exact mechanism that leads to solarwind heating and acceleration is poorly understood. In order to improve the understanding of the physical mechanisms that are involved in these processes a combination of modeling and observational analysis is required. Recent models constrained by satellite observations show that wave heating in the low-frequency (MHD), and high-frequency (ion-cyclotron) range may provide the necessary momentum and heat input to coronal plasma and produce the solarwind. This review is focused on the results of several recent solar modeling studies that include waves explicitly in the MHD and the kinetic regime. The current status of the understanding of the solarwind acceleration and heating by waves is reviewed.

The Pinhole/Occulter Facility is a powerful tool for studying the physics of the extended corona and origins of the solarwind. Spectroscopic data acquired by the P/OF coronal instruments can greatly expand empirical information about temperatures, densities, flow velocities, magnetic fields, and chemical abundances in the corona out to r or approx. 10 solar radii. Such information is needed to provide tight empirical constraints on critical physical processes involved in the transport and dissipation of energy and momentum, the heating and acceleration of plasma, and the acceleration of energetic particles. Because of its high sensitivity, high spatial and temporal resolutions, and powerful capabilities for plasma diagnostics, P/OF can significantly increase our empirical knowledge about coronal streamers and transients and thereby advance the understanding of the physics of these phenomena. P/OF observations can be used to establish the role in solarwind generation, if any, of small-scale dynamical phenomena, such as spicules, macrospicules and coronal bullets, and the role of the fine-scale structures, such as polar plumes. Finally, simultaneous measurements by the P/OF coronal and hard X-ray instruments can provide critical empirical information concerning nonthermal energy releases and acceleration of energetic particles in the corona.

Examples of extreme events of solarwind and their effect on geomagnetic conditions are discussed here. It is found that there are two regimes of high speed solarwind streams with a threshold of ∼ 850 km s-1. Geomagnetic activity enhancement rate (GAER) is defined as an average increase in Ap value per unit average increase in the peak solarwind velocity (Vp) during the stream. GAER was found to be different in the two regimes of high speed streams with +ve and -ve IMF. GAER is 0.73 and 0.53 for solarwind streams with +ve and -ve IMF respectively for the extremely high speed streams (< 850 km s-1). This indicates that streams above the threshold speed with +ve IMF are 1.4 times more effective in enhancing geomagnetic activity than those with -ve IMF. However, the high speed streams below the threshold with -ve IMF are 1.1 times more effective in enhancing geomagnetic activity than those with +ve IMF. The violent solar activity period (October–November 2003) of cycle 23 presents a very special case during which many severe and strong effects were seen in the environment of the Earth and other planets; however, the z-component of IMF (Bz) is mostly positive during this period. The most severe geomagnetic storm of this cycle occurred when Bz was positive.

Turbulence is a chaotic flow regime filled by irregular flows. The dissipation of turbulence is a fundamental problem in the realm of physics. Theoretically, dissipation cannot be ultimately achieved without collisions, and so how turbulent kinetic energy is dissipated in the nearly collisionless solarwind is a challenging problem. Wave particle interactions and magnetic reconnection are two possible dissipation mechanisms, but which mechanism dominates is still a controversial topic. Here we analyze the dissipation region scaling around a solarwind magnetic reconnection region. We find that the magnetic reconnection region shows a unique multifractal scaling in the dissipation range, while the ambient solarwind turbulence reveals a monofractal dissipation process for most of the time. These results provide the first observational evidences for the intermittent multifractal dissipation region scaling around a magnetic reconnection site, and they also have significant implications for the fundamental energy...

Turbulence is a chaotic flow regime filled by irregular flows. The dissipation of turbulence is a fundamental problem in the realm of physics. Theoretically, dissipation ultimately cannot be achieved without collisions, and so how turbulent kinetic energy is dissipated in the nearly collisionless solarwind is a challenging problem. Wave particle interactions and magnetic reconnection (MR) are two possible dissipation mechanisms, but which mechanism dominates is still a controversial topic. Here we analyze the dissipation region scaling around a solarwind MR region. We find that the MR region shows unique multifractal scaling in the dissipation range, while the ambient solarwind turbulence reveals a monofractal dissipation process for most of the time. These results provide the first observational evidences for intermittent multifractal dissipation region scaling around a MR site, and they also have significant implications for the fundamental energy dissipation process.

By explicitly taking into account effects of Alfven waves, I derive from a simple energetics argument a fundamental relation which predicts solarwind (SW) speeds in the vicinity of the earth from physical properties on the sun. Kojima et al. recently found from their observations that a ratio of surface magnetic field strength to an expansion factor of open magnetic flux tubes is a good indicator of the SW speed. I show by using the derived relation that this nice correlation is an evidence of the Alfven wave which accelerates SW in expanding flux tubes. The observations further require that fluctuation amplitudes of magnetic field lines at the surface should be almost universal in different coronal holes, which needs to be tested by future observations.

The fluctuations in the solarwind are often modeled in terms of two distinct populations: (a) a 'wave-like' population with quasi-parallel wavenumbers and (b) a quasi-two dimensional 'turbulent-like' fluctuations with perpendicular wavenumbers. Here the qualification "quasi-parallel" or "quasi-2D" means that nearby wavevectors are grouped together in an idealzed way, for simplicity. The relative abundance of these two populations is important in gaining insight on the dynamics of waves or turbulence in the solarwind, and also in understanding the transport of energetic particle populations, as turbulence geometry has a major impact on scattering. It has been established in the literature that turbulence is, generally speaking, more developed in the slow solarwind, with power spectra closer to the kolmogorov value at 1AU, while the fast solarwind is more "Alfvenic", typically with higher values of the cross helicity. It seems natural therefore to investigate the anisotropy structure of solarwind fluctuations as a function of wind speed. We present here our preliminary results in this regard, obtained from magnetic and plasma data from the ACE specraft, at 1AU, essentially in the ecliptic plane. We also discuss possible implications for the modeling the evolution of waves and turbulence in the solarwind.

It is commonly thought that fast solarwind tends to be highly Alfvenic, with strong correlations between velocity and magnetic fluctuations, but examples have been known for over 20 years in which slow wind is both Alfvenic and has many other properties more typically expected of fast solarwind. This paper will present a search for examples of such flows from more recent data, and will begin to characterize the general characteristics of them. A very preliminary search suggests that such intervals are more common in the rising phase of the solar cycle. These intervals are important for providing constraints on models of solarwind acceleration, and in particular the role waves might or might not play in that process.

As an astronomy instructor I am always looking for commonly experienced Earthly phenomena to help my students and me understand and appreciate similar occurrences elsewhere in the solar system. Recently I wrote short "TPT" articles on frost and precipitation. The present article is on winds in the solar system. A windy day or storm might…

As an astronomy instructor I am always looking for commonly experienced Earthly phenomena to help my students and me understand and appreciate similar occurrences elsewhere in the solar system. Recently I wrote short "TPT" articles on frost and precipitation. The present article is on winds in the solar system. A windy day or storm might motivate…

As an astronomy instructor I am always looking for commonly experienced Earthly phenomena to help my students and me understand and appreciate similar occurrences elsewhere in the solar system. Recently I wrote short "TPT" articles on frost and precipitation. The present article is on winds in the solar system. A windy day or storm might…

The solar cycle variations of various solarwind parameters are reviewed. It is shown that there is a gradual decrease in the duration of high-speed streams from the declining phase of solar cycle 20 through the ascending phase of cycle 21 and a corresponding decrease in the annual average of the proton speed toward solar maximum. Beta, the ratio of the proton thermal pressure to magnetic pressure, undergoes a significant solar cycle variation, as expected from the variation in the IMF. Individual hourly averages of beta often exceed unity with 20 cases exceeding 10 and one case as high as 25. The Alfven Mach number shows a solar cycle variation similar to beta, lower aboard solar maximum. High-speed streams can be seen clearly in epsilon and the y component of the interplanetary magnetic field.

As wind and solar power provide a growing share of Europe's electricity1, understanding and accommodating their variability on multiple timescales remains a critical problem. On weekly timescales, variability is related to long-lasting weather conditions, called weather regimes2-5, which can cause lulls with a loss of wind power across neighbouring countries6. Here we show that weather regimes provide a meteorological explanation for multi-day fluctuations in Europe's wind power and can help guide new deployment pathways which minimise this variability. Mean generation during different regimes currently ranges from 22 GW to 44 GW and is expected to triple by 2030 with current planning strategies. However, balancing future wind capacity across regions with contrasting inter-regime behaviour - specifically deploying in the Balkans instead of the North Sea - would almost eliminate these output variations, maintain mean generation, and increase fleet-wide minimum output. Solar photovoltaics could balance low-windregimes locally, but only by expanding current capacity tenfold. New deployment strategies based on an understanding of continent-scale wind patterns and pan-European collaboration could enable a high share of wind energy whilst minimising the negative impacts of output variability.

The uncertainty associated with the wind variability on wind farm energy production estimate may be mitigated when considering several wind farms within a portfolio rather than isolated. If two wind farms are geographically disperse in such a way that the windregime in which wind farm is immersed can be considered independent or at least partly independent, the deviations on the annual energy production from the average of each wind farm may compensate each other - the so called ''portfolio effect''. This is an important feature for investors and operators when quantifying the associated uncertainty of the predicted energy yield of the overall portfolio for future timescales such as 1- year or 10-years periods. The methodology to determine the degree of dependency between windregimes have been applied in an hypothetical portfolio of seven wind farms dispersed from north to south in continental Portugal. (orig.)

Wind loads on solar energy systems are not covered by current wind loading standards. This paper describes results of a parametric study into the wind loads 0on solar energy systems,. which are placed on flat roofs. Wind tunnel measurements have been carried out on a number of configurations. The

Wind loads on solar energy systems are not covered by current wind loading standards. This paper describes results of a parametric study into the wind loads 0on solar energy systems,. which are placed on flat roofs. Wind tunnel measurements have been carried out on a number of configurations. The re

Wind loads on solar energy systems are not covered by current wind loading standards. This paper describes results of a parametric study into the wind loads 0on solar energy systems,. which are placed on flat roofs. Wind tunnel measurements have been carried out on a number of configurations. The re

Weather radar observations are called to play an important role in offshore wind energy. In particular, they can enable the monitoring of weather conditions in the vicinity of large-scale offshore wind farms and thereby notify the arrival of precipitation systems associated with severe wind...... and amplitude) using reflectivity observations from a single weather radar system. A categorical sequence of most likely windregimes is estimated from a wind speed time series by combining a Markov-Switching model and a global decoding technique, the Viterbi algorithm. In parallel, attributes of precipitation...... systems are extracted from weather radar images. These attributes describe the global intensity, spatial continuity and motion of precipitation echoes on the images. Finally, a CART classification tree is used to find the broad relationships between precipitation attributes and windregimes...

The present paper discusses wind and wind power characteristics in a region north of 40{sup o}S (North Patagonia, Argentina) as well as wind power projects sustainability. Extreme wind episodes influence most economic and social regional activities. Mean flow pattern was studied in three North Patagonia sites: Neuquen, Mari Menuco and Cutral-Co, by sampling analysis of wind direction and intensity during a year. Gusts were quantified and strong winds were studied. Available meteorological power was also estimated. It was observed that North Patagonia is a place of great wind power potential. However, the energy available, which is related to prevailing strong winds, is also associated to high gust occurrence which certainly restricts exploitation. (Author)

In the last decades, wind power generation has proven its suitability to the Gigawatt scale, necessary to an effective contribution to electric systems. This paper demonstrates, from existing data, the wind / hydro seasonal complementarity in the relevant areas of Brazil, and discusses its possible effect on the feasibility of seasonal stabilization of the energy supply in the Brazilian interconnected grid, taking advantage of the country's large natural resources available. Case studies for the southern/southeastern and the northeastern regions of Brazil are presented. A brief analysis is included regarding the geographic location of the interconnected grid, main hydro power plants, and estimated promising wind farm areas in Brazil. (orig.)

Recent refinement of analysis of ACE/SWICS data (Advanced Composition Explorer/SolarWind Ion Composition Spectrometer) and of onboard data for Genesis Discovery Mission of 3 regimes of solarwind at Earth-Sun L1 make it an appropriate time to update the availability and condition of Genesis samples specifically collected in these three regimes and currently curated at Johnson Space Center. ACE/SWICS spacecraft data indicate that solarwind flow types emanating from the interstream regions, from coronal holes and from coronal mass ejections are elementally and isotopically fractionated in different ways from the solar photosphere, and that correction of solarwind values to photosphere values is non-trivial. Returned Genesis solarwind samples captured very different kinds of information about these three regimes than spacecraft data. Samples were collected from 11/30/2001 to 4/1/2004 on the declining phase of solar cycle 23. Meshik, et al is an example of precision attainable. Earlier high precision laboratory analyses of noble gases collected in the interstream, coronal hole and coronal mass ejection regimes speak to degree of fractionation in solarwind formation and models that laboratory data support. The current availability and condition of samples captured on collector plates during interstream slow solarwind, coronal hole high speed solarwind and coronal mass ejections are de-scribed here for potential users of these samples.

This book provides an overview of solarwind turbulence from both the theoretical and observational perspective. It argues that the interplanetary medium offers the best opportunity to directly study turbulent fluctuations in collisionless plasmas. In fact, during expansion, the solarwind evolves towards a state characterized by large-amplitude fluctuations in all observed parameters, which resembles, at least at large scales, the well-known hydrodynamic turbulence. This text starts with historical references to past observations and experiments on turbulent flows. It then introduces the Navier-Stokes equations for a magnetized plasma whose low-frequency turbulence evolution is described within the framework of the MHD approximation. It also considers the scaling of plasma and magnetic field fluctuations and the study of nonlinear energy cascades within the same framework. It reports observations of turbulence in the ecliptic and at high latitude, treating Alfvénic and compressive fluctuations separately in...

The cyclic evolution of the heliospheric plasma parameters is related to the time-dependent boundary conditions in the solar corona. "Minimal" coronal configurations correspond to the regular appearance of the tenuous, but hot and fast plasma streams from the large polar coronal holes. The denser, but cooler and slower solarwind is adjacent to coronal streamers. Irregular dynamic manifestations are present in the corona and the solarwind everywhere and always. They follow the solar activity cycle rather well. Because of this, the direct and indirect solarwind measurements demonstrate clear variations in space and time according to the minimal, intermediate and maximal conditions of the cycles. The average solarwind density, velocity and temperature measured at the Earth's orbit show specific decadal variations and trends, which are of the order of the first tens per cent during the last three solar cycles. Statistical, spectral and correlation characteristics of the solarwind are reviewed with the emphasis on the cycles.

Full Text Available Stellar analogs for the solarwind have proven to be frustratingly difficult to detect directly. However, these stellar winds can be studied indirectly by observing the interaction regions carved out by the collisions between these winds and the interstellar medium (ISM. These interaction regions are called "astrospheres", analogous to the "heliosphere" surrounding the Sun. The heliosphere and astrospheres contain a population of hydrogen heated by charge exchange processes that can produce enough H I Ly alpha absorption to be detectable in UV spectra of nearby stars from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST. The amount of astrospheric absorption is a diagnostic for the strength of the stellar wind, so these observations have provided the first measurements of solar-like stellar winds. Results from these stellar wind studies and their implications for our understanding of the solarwind are reviewed here. Of particular interest are results concerning the past history of the solarwind and its impact on planetary atmospheres.

Average or expectation values for annual power of a wind turbine in a Rayleigh windregime are calculated and plotted as a function of cut-out wind speed. This wind speed is expressed in multiples of the annual average wind speed at the turbine installation site. To provide a common basis for comparison of all real and imagined turbines, the Rayleigh-Betz wind machine is postulated. This machine is an ideal wind machine operating with the ideal Betz power coefficient of 0.593 in a Rayleigh probability windregime. All other average annual powers are expressed in fractions of that power. Cases considered include: (1) an ideal machine with finite power and finite cutout speed, (2) real machines operating in variable speed mode at their maximum power coefficient, and (3) real machines operating at constant speed.

In the development and utilization of new energy sources, the solar energy and wind energy are paid more attention by various countries, and have become a new field of energy development and utilization of the highest level, the most mature technology, the most widely used and commercial development conditions for new energy. But both the traditional wind power system and solar power system have the characteristic of energy instability. Therefore, wind-solar hybrid power system was proposed i...

The Genesis mission returned samples of solarwind to Earth in September, 2004 for ground-based analyses of solar-wind composition, particularly for isotope ratios. Substrates, consisting mostly of high-purity semiconductor materials, were exposed to the solarwind at L1 from December 2001 to April 2004. In addition to a bulk sample of the solarwind, separate samples of coronal hole, interstream, and coronal mass ejection material were obtained. While many of the substrates were broken upon landing due to the failure to deploy the parachute, a number of results have been obtained, and most of the primary science objectives will likely be met. These include noble gas (He, Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe) isotope ratios in the bulk solarwind and in different solarwind regimes, and the nitrogen and oxygen isotope ( 18O/17O/16O) ratios to high precision. The greatest successes to date have been with the noble gases. Light noble gases from bulk solarwind and separate solar-windregime samples have been analyzed to date. The regime compositions are so far ambiguous on the occurrence of the type of isotopic fractionation expected from Coulomb drag acceleration. Neon results from closed system stepped etching of bulk metallic glass have revealed the nature of isotopic fractionation as a function of depth, which in lunar samples have for years deceptively suggested the presence of a separate solar component. Isotope ratios of the heavy noble gases, nitrogen, and oxygen are still in the process of being measured.

To evaluate the isotopic composition of the solar nebula from which the planets formed, the relation between isotopes measured in the solarwind and on the Sun's surface needs to be known. The Genesis Discovery mission returned independent samples of three types of solarwind produced by different solar processes that provide a check on possible isotopic variations, or fractionation, between the solar-wind and solar-surface material. At a high level of precision, we observed no significant inter-regime differences in 20Ne/22Ne or 36Ar/38Ar values. For 20Ne/22Ne, the difference between low- and high-speed wind components is 0.24 +/- 0.37%; for 36Ar/38Ar, it is 0.11 +/- 0.26%. Our measured 36Ar/38Ar ratio in the solarwind of 5.501 +/- 0.005 is 3.42 +/- 0.09% higher than that of the terrestrial atmosphere, which may reflect atmospheric losses early in Earth's history.

Solarwind thermal electron distributions exhibit distinctive trends which suggest Coulomb collisions and geometric expansion in the interplanetary magnetic field play keys roles in electron transport. We introduce a simple numerical model incorporating these mechanisms, discuss the ramifications of model results, and assess the validity of the model in terms of ISEE-3 and Ulysses observations. Although the model duplicates the shape of the electron distributions, and explains certain other observational features, observed gradients in total electron temperature indicate the importance of additional heating mechanisms. 5 refs., 7 figs.

Solarwind thermal electron distributions exhibit distinctive trends which suggest Coulomb collisions and geometric expansion in the interplanetary magnetic field play keys roles in electron transport. We introduce a simple numerical model incorporating these mechanisms, discuss the ramifications of model results, and assess the validity of the model in terms of ISEE-3 and Ulysses observations. Although the model duplicates the shape of the electron distributions, and explains certain other observational features, observed gradients in total electron temperature indicate the importance of additional heating mechanisms. 5 refs., 7 figs.

The indefinite increase of temperature predicted by the solarwind expansion in the direction parallel to the interplanetary magnetic field is already notorious for not being confirmed by the observations. In hot and dilute plasmas from space particle-particle collisions are not efficient in constraining large deviations from isotropy, but the resulting firehose instability provides in this case plausible limitations for the temperature anisotropy of the thermal (core) populations of both the electron and proton species. The present paper takes into discussion the suprathermal (halo) electrons, which are ubiquitous in the solarwind. Less dense but hotter than the core, suprathermals may be highly anisotropic and susceptible to the firehose instability. The main features of the instability are here derived from a first-order theory for conditions specific to the suprathermal electrons in the solarwind and terrestrial magnetospheres. Unveiled here, new regimes of the electron firehose instability may be exclu...

Jupiter's main auroral emission is driven by a system of corotation enforcement currents that arises to speed up outflowing Iogenic plasma and is not due to the magnetosphere-solarwind interaction like at Earth. The solarwind is generally expected to have only a small influence on Jupiter's magnetosphere and aurora compared to the influence of rotational stresses due to the planet's rapid rotation. However, there is considerable observational evidence that the solarwind does affect the magnetopause standoff distance, auroral radio emissions, and the position and brightness of the UV auroral emissions. Using the Michigan SolarWind Model (mSWiM) to predict the solarwind conditions upstream of Jupiter we have identified intervals of high and low solarwind dynamic pressure in the Galileo dataset, and use this information to quantify how a magnetospheric compression affects the magnetospheric field configuration. We have developed separate spatial fits to the compressed and nominal magnetic field data, accounting for variations with radial distance and local time. These two fits can be used to update the flux equivalence mapping model of Vogt et al. (2011), which links auroral features to source regions in the middle and outer magnetosphere. The updated version accounts for changing solarwind conditions and provides a way to quantify the expected solarwind-induced variability in the ionospheric mapping of the main auroral emission, satellite footprints, and other auroral features. Our results are highly relevant to interpretation of the new auroral observations from the Juno mission.

Fast solarwind has been recognized, about 40 years ago, to originate in polar coronal holes (CHs), that, since then, have been identified with sources of recurrent high speed wind streams. As of today, however, there is no general consensus about whether there are, within CHs, preferential locations where the solarwind is accelerated. Knowledge of slow wind sources is far from complete as well. Slow wind observed in situ can be traced back to its solar source by backward extrapolation of magnetic fields whose field lines are streamlines of the outflowing plasma. However, this technique often has not the necessary precision for an indisputable identification of the region where wind originates. As the Sun progresses through its activity cycle, different wind sources prevail and contribute to filling the heliosphere. Our present knowledge of different wind sources is here summarized. Also, a Section addresses the problem of wind acceleration in the low corona, as inferred from an analysis of UV data, and illustrates changes between fast and slow wind profiles and possible signatures of changes along the solar cycle. A brief reference to recent work about the deep roots of solarwind and their changes over different solar cycles concludes the review.

Due to the increasing number and the growing size of wind farms, the distance among them continues to decrease. Thus, it is necessary to understand how these large finite-size wind farms and their wakes could interfere the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) dynamics and adjacent wind farms. Fully-developed flow inside wind farms has been extensively studied through numerical simulations of infinite wind farms. The transportation of momentum and energy is only vertical and the advection of them is neglected in these infinite wind farms. However, less attention has been paid to examine the length of wind farms required to reach such asymptotic regime and the ABL dynamics in the leading and trailing edges of the large finite-size wind farms. Large eddy simulations are performed in this study to investigate the flow adjustment inside large finite-size wind farms in conventionally-neutral boundary layer with the effect of Coriolis force and free-atmosphere stratification from 1 to 5 K/km. For the large finite-size wind farms considered in the present work, when the potential temperature lapse rate is 5 K/km, the wind farms exceed the height of the ABL by two orders of magnitude for the incoming flow inside the farms to approach the fully-developed regime. An entrance fetch of approximately 40 times of the ABL height is also required for such flow adjustment. At the fully-developed flow regime of the large finite-size wind farms, the flow characteristics match those of infinite wind farms even though they have different adjustment length scales. The role of advection at the entrance and exit regions of the large finite-size wind farms is also examined. The interaction between the internal boundary layer developed above the large finite-size wind farms and the ABL under different potential temperature lapse rates are compared. It is shown that the potential temperature lapse rate plays a role in whether the flow inside the large finite-size wind farms adjusts to the fully

A solar energy system including a pedestal defining a longitudinal axis, a frame that is supported by the pedestal and that is rotateable relative to the pedestal about the longitudinal axis, the frame including at least one solar device, and a wind vane operatively connected to the frame to urge the frame relative to the pedestal about the longitudinal axis in response to wind acting on the wind vane.

This paper proposes a methodology to map the various acoustic regimes of wind instruments. The maps can be generated in a multi-dimensional space consisting of design, control parameters, and initial conditions. The bound- aries of the maps are obtained explicitly in terms of the parameters using a support vector machine (SVM) classifier as well as a dedicated adaptive sam- pling scheme. The approach is demonstrated on a simplified clarinet model for which several maps are generated based on different criteria. Examples of computation of the probability of occurrence of a specific acoustic regime are also provided. In addition, the approach is demonstrated on a design optimization example for optimal intonation.

challenge, the following study was designed to investigate the potential for wind power integration to alter riparian flow regimes below hydroelectric dams. A hydrological model of a three-dam cascade in the Roanoke River basin (Virginia, USA) is interfaced with a simulated electricity market (i.e. a unit commitment problem) representing the Dominion Zone of PJM Interconnection. Incorporating forecasts of electricity demand, hydro capacity and wind availability, a mixed-integer optimization program minimizes the system cost of meeting hourly demand and reserve requirements by means of a diverse generation portfolio (e.g. nuclear, fossil, hydro, and biomass). A secondary 'balancing' energy market is executed if real-time wind generation is less than the day-ahead forecast, calling upon reserved generation resources to meet the supply shortfall. Hydropower release schedules are determined across a range of wind development scenarios (varying wind's fraction of total installed generating capacity, as well as its geographical source region). Flow regimes for each wind development scenario are compared against both historical and simulated flows under current operations (negligible wind power), as well as simulated natural flows (dam removal), in terms of ecologically relevant flow metrics. Results quantify the ability of wind power development to alter within-week stream flows downstream from hydropower dams.

The streamer belt region surrounding the heliospheric current sheet (HCS) is generally treated as the primary or sole source of the slow solarwind. Synoptic maps of solarwind speed predicted by the Wang-Sheeley-Arge model during selected periods of solar cycle 23, however, show many areas of slow wind displaced from the streamer belt. These areas commonly have the form of an arc that is connected to the streamer belt at both ends. The arcs mark the boundaries between fields emanating from different coronal holes of the same polarity and thus trace the paths of belts of pseudostreamers, i.e., unipolar streamers that form over double arcades and lack current sheets. The arc pattern is consistent with the predicted topological mapping of the narrow open corridor or singular separator line that must connect the holes and, thus, consistent with the separatrix-web model of the slow solarwind. Near solar maximum, pseudostreamer belts stray far from the HCS-associated streamer belt and, together with it, form a global-wide web of slow wind. Recognition of pseudostreamer belts as prominent sources of slow wind provides a new template for understanding solarwind stream structure, especially near solar maximum.

The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), previously known as Triana, spacecraft is expected to be launched in late 2014. It will carry a fluxgate magnetometer, Faraday Cup solarwind detector and a top-hat electron electrostatic analyzer. The Faraday Cup will provide an unprecedented 10 vectors/sec time resolution measurement of the solarwind proton and alpha reduced distribution functions. Coupled with the 40 vector/sec vector magnetometer measurements, the identification of specific wave modes in the solarwind will be possible for the first time. The science objectives and data products of the mission will be discussed.

High-speed solarwind streams emanating from coronal holes are frequently impinging on the Earth's magnetosphere causing recurrent, medium-level geomagnetic storm activity. Modeling high-speed solarwind streams is thus an essential element of successful space weather forecasting. Here we evaluate high-speed stream forecasts made by the empirical solarwind forecast (ESWF) and the semiempirical Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model based on the in situ plasma measurements from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft for the years 2011 to 2014. While the ESWF makes use of an empirical relation between the coronal hole area observed in Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) images and solarwind properties at the near-Earth environment, the WSA model establishes a link between properties of the open magnetic field lines extending from the photosphere to the corona and the background solarwind conditions. We found that both solarwind models are capable of predicting the large-scale features of the observed solarwind speed (root-mean-square error, RMSE ≈100 km/s) but tend to either overestimate (ESWF) or underestimate (WSA) the number of high-speed solarwind streams (threat score, TS ≈ 0.37). The predicted high-speed streams show typical uncertainties in the arrival time of about 1 day and uncertainties in the speed of about 100 km/s. General advantages and disadvantages of the investigated solarwind models are diagnosed and outlined.

A new study published in Nature this week reveals that asteroid surfaces age and redden much faster than previously thought -- in less than a million years, the blink of an eye for an asteroid. This study has finally confirmed that the solarwind is the most likely cause of very rapid space weathering in asteroids. This fundamental result will help astronomers relate the appearance of an asteroid to its actual history and identify any after effects of a catastrophic impact with another asteroid. ESO PR Photo 16a/09 Young Asteroids Look Old "Asteroids seem to get a ‘sun tan' very quickly," says lead author Pierre Vernazza. "But not, as for people, from an overdose of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation, but from the effects of its powerful wind." It has long been known that asteroid surfaces alter in appearance with time -- the observed asteroids are much redder than the interior of meteorites found on Earth [1] -- but the actual processes of this "space weathering" and the timescales involved were controversial. Thanks to observations of different families of asteroids [2] using ESO's New Technology Telescope at La Silla and the Very Large Telescope at Paranal, as well as telescopes in Spain and Hawaii, Vernazza's team have now solved the puzzle. When two asteroids collide, they create a family of fragments with "fresh" surfaces. The astronomers found that these newly exposed surfaces are quickly altered and change colour in less than a million years -- a very short time compared to the age of the Solar System. "The charged, fast moving particles in the solarwind damage the asteroid's surface at an amazing rate [3]", says Vernazza. Unlike human skin, which is damaged and aged by repeated overexposure to sunlight, it is, perhaps rather surprisingly, the first moments of exposure (on the timescale considered) -- the first million years -- that causes most of the aging in asteroids. By studying different families of asteroids, the team has also shown that an asteroid

We analyze the coherent structures and intermittent turbulence in the solarwind plasma using measurements from the Wind spacecraft. Previously established novel wavelet and higher order statistics are used in this work. We analyze the wavelet power spectrum of various solarwind plasma parameters. We construct a statistical significance level in the wavelet power spectrum to quantify the interference effects arising from filling missing data in the time series, allowing extraction of significant power from the measured data. We analyze each wavelet power spectra for transient coherency, and global periodicities resulting from the superposition of repeating coherent structures. Furthermore, these coherent structures are preferentially found in plasma unstable to the mirror and firehose instabilities. These results offer a new understanding of various processes in a turbulent regime. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for current theories of solarwind generation and describe future work for determining the relationship between the coherent structures in our ionic composition data and the structure of the coronal magnetic field. Keywords: Wavelet Power Spectrum, Coherent structure and Solarwind plasma

The interplanetary shocks have a very high correlation with the annual sunspot numbers during the solar cycle; however the correlation falls very low on shorter time scale. Thus poses questions and difficulty in the predictability. Space weather is largely controlled by these interplanetary shocks, solar energetic events and the extremes of solarwind. In fact most of the solarwind extremes are related to the solar energetic phenomena. It is quite well understood that the energetic events like flares, filament eruptions etc. occurring on the Sun produce high speed extremes both in terms of density and speed. There is also high speed solarwind steams associated with the coronal holes mainly because the magnetic field lines are open there and the solar plasma finds it easy to escape from there. These are relatively tenuous high speed streams and hence create low intensity geomagnetic storms of higher duration. The solar flares and/or filament eruptions usually release excess coronal mass into the interplanetary medium and thus these energetic events send out high density and high speed solarwind which statistically found to produce more intense storms. The other extremes of solarwind are those in which density and speed are much lower than the normal values. Several such events have been observed and are found to produce space weather consequences of different kind. It is found that such extremes are more common around the maximum of solar cycle 20 and 23. Most of these have significantly low Alfven Mach number. This article is intended to outline the interplanetary and geomagnetic consequences of observed by ground based and satellite systems for the solarwind extremes.

A strong spatial association between bipolar electrostatic solitary waves (ESWs) and magnetic current sheets (CSs) in the solarwind is reported here for the first time. This association requires that the plasma instabilities (e.g., Buneman, electron two stream) which generate ESWs are preferentially localized to solarwind CSs. Distributions of CS properties (including shear angle, thickness, solarwind speed, and vector magnetic field change) are examined for differences between CSs associated with ESWs and randomly chosen CSs. Possible mechanisms for producing ESW-generating instabilities at solarwind CSs are considered, including magnetic reconnection.

EPA and NREL created a decision tree to guide state and local governments and other stakeholders through a process for screening sites for their suitability for future redevelopment with solar photovoltaic (PV) energy and wind energy.

The solarwind interaction with Ceres is studied for a high water vapor release from its surface using a hybrid model including photoionization. We use a water vapor production rate thought to be due to subsurface sublimation, corresponding to a detection on 6 March 2013 by the Herschel Space Observatory. We present the general morphology of the plasma interactions, both close to Ceres and on a larger scale. Mass-loading of water ions causes a magnetic pile-up region in-front of Ceres, where the solarwind deflects and slows down. The large body makes an obstacle to the solarwind and creates an asymmetric wake downstream. On a global scale, Ceres has a comet-like interaction with the solarwind with observable perturbations far downstream of the body.

It is well known that the solarwind is a major driver of ultra-low frequency [ULF] power at ground locations from low to high latitudes. However, due to the scarcity of deep polar cap magnetometer sites, it is not clear when, where, or if this is true deep inside the polar cap on open field lines where interplanetary magnetic field [IMF] ULF waves could possibly be directly detected. Given recent observations of very large Joule heating estimates from DMSP data, together with the large heating reported by the CHAMP satellite, it is important to understand the degree to which ULF waves in the solarwind can directly cause such heating. Using a time series of lagged correlation sequences ("dynamic correlograms") between GSM Bz ULF power (computed via data obtained from NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer [ACE] ahead of Earth in the solarwind) and the horizontal ULF power (H^2=N^2+E^2) from ground-based magnetometers in Earth's southern polar cap, we investigate the direct penetration of ULF waves from the solarwind into the polar ionosphere during a gamut of space weather conditions at a distributed network of Automated Geophysical Observatories [AGOs] in Antarctica. To infer causation, a predicted lag correlation maximum at each time step is computed by simply dividing the associated distance of ACE from Earth by the concurrent bulk solarwind speed. This technique helps parse out direct penetration of solarwind ULF waves from other sources (e.g., via leakage from closed field line resonances due to the bulk solarwind plasma viscously interacting at dawn/dusk flanks inducing Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities [KHI] or compressional modes induced by impulses in solarwind dynamic pressure). The identified direct-penetrating ULF waves are related to the DMSP-derived Poynting fluxes by regression analysis, and conclusions are drawn for the importance of the ULF source for the measured heating.

The expected characteristics of the solarwind, extrapolated from the vicinity of the earth are described. Several models are examined for the interaction of the solarwind with the interstellar plasma and magnetic field. Various aspects of the penetration of neutral interstellar gas into the solarwind are considered. The dynamic effects of the neutral gas on the solarwind are described. Problems associated with the interaction of cosmic rays with the solarwind are discussed.

This paper presents an overview of the wind loads on roofs, equipped with solar energy products, so called Active Roofs. Values given in this paper have been based on wind tunnel and full scale measurements, carried out at TNO, and on an interpretation of existing rules and guidelines. The results a

The solarwind is a direct manifestation of the coronal heating processes which continue to elude us. For over three decades, observations in interplanetary space have identified two types of wind: a slow component with highly variable physical properties also characterized by speeds typically beow 500 kn/s, and a much less variable fast wind flowing on average at 750 km/s1.

By analyzing the motions of test particles observed remotely in the tail of Comet Encke, we demonstrate that the solarwind undergoes turbulent processing enroute from the Sun to the Earth and that the kinetic energy entrained in the large-scale turbulence is sufficient to explain the well-known anomalous heating of the solarwind. Using the heliospheric imaging (HI-1) camera on board NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft, we have observed an ensemble of compact features in the comet tail as they became entrained in the solarwind near 0.4 AU. We find that the features are useful as test particles, via mean-motion analysis and a forward model of pickup dynamics. Using population analysis of the ensemble's relative motion, we find a regime of random-walk diffusion in the solarwind, followed, on larger scales, by a surprising regime of semiconfinement that we attribute to turbulent eddies in the solarwind. The entrained kinetic energy of the turbulent motions represents a sufficient energy reservoir to heat the solarwind to observed temperatures at 1 AU. We determine the Lagrangian-frame diffusion coefficient in the diffusive regime, derive upper limits for the small scale coherence length of solarwind turbulence, compare our results to existing Eulerian-frame measurements, and compare the turbulent velocity with the size of the observed eddies extrapolated to 1 AU. We conclude that the slow solarwind is fully mixed by turbulence on scales corresponding to a 1–2 hr crossing time at Earth; and that solarwind variability on timescales shorter than 1–2 hr is therefore dominated by turbulent processing rather than by direct solar effects.

The Earth's Moon, lacking a substantial atmosphere or global magnetic field, presents one of the simpler obstacles to solarwind flow in our solar system. Despite this apparent simplicity, a rich array of interesting plasma physics occurs in the lunar environment. To first order, the Moon is completely unshielded from solarwind plasma and solar photons, and direct incidence of solarwind plasma can lead to implantation of volatiles and ion sputtering and pickup. The solarwind is blocked by the lunar obstacle, resulting in a plasma void on the night side. A potential drop across the wake boundary is generated as solarwind electrons attempt to refill the wake cavity, resulting in a tenuous high-temperature electron population and anisotropic ion beams in the wake. A system of diamagnetic currents is formed on the boundary surface, enhancing the magnetic field in the wake and reducing the field around it. Meanwhile, waves are generated by the unstable particle distributions generated by this interaction. On the day side, photon-driven positive charging of the lunar surface occurs. On the night side, on the other hand, charging is controlled by the tenuous wake plasma, and is generally electron-driven and negative. When the Moon traverses the Earth's magnetotail and is exposed to low-density plasma in the tail lobes and high-temperature plasma in the plasmasheet, extreme surface charging of up to hundreds of V positive and several keV negative can occur. Lunar surface charging may affect ion sputtering and likely results in significant dust transport. The presence of remanent crustal magnetism causes significant perturbations to this picture. Some crustal fields are large enough to stand off the solarwind (possibly affecting solarwind volatile implantation), and we observe large shock-like magnetic enhancements upstream from the largest crustal sources. The occurence of these "limb shocks" depends on solarwind parameters, suggesting that the crustal sources are

2003) and Schwadron et al. (2005) as constraints. The new relationship was tested by using it to drive the ENLIL 3‐D MHD solarwind model and obtain...it to drive the ENLIL 3‐D MHD solarwind model and obtain solarwind parameters at Earth (1.0 AU) and Ulysses (1.4 AU). The improvements in speed...propagated out into the heliosphere using the ENLIL solarwind model . ENLIL is a 3‐D Magne- tohydrodynamic ( MHD ) model of the heliosphere [Odstrcil, 2003

We study the Yaglom law, which relates the mixed third order structure function to the average dissipation rate of turbulence, in a uniformly expanding solarwind by using the two scales expansion model of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. We show that due to the expansion of the solarwind two new terms appear in the Yaglom law. The first term is related to the decay of the turbulent energy by nonlinear interactions, whereas the second term is related to the non-zero cross-correlation of the Els\\"asser fields. Using magnetic field and plasma data from WIND and Helios 2 spacecrafts, we show that at lower frequencies in the inertial range of MHD turbulence the new terms become comparable to Yaglom's third order mixed moment, and therefore they cannot be neglected in the evaluation of the energy cascade rate in the solarwind.

Extended MHD is a one-fluid model that incorporates two-fluid effects such as electron inertia and the Hall drift. This model is used to construct fully nonlinear Alfvénic wave solutions, and thereby derive the kinetic and magnetic spectra by resorting to a Kolmogorov-like hypothesis based on the constant cascading rates of the energy and generalized helicities of this model. The magnetic and kinetic spectra are derived in the ideal (k\\lt 1/{λ }i), Hall (1/{λ }i\\lt k\\lt 1/{λ }e), and electron inertia (k\\gt 1/{λ }e) regimes; k is the wavenumber and {λ }s=c/{ω }{ps} is the skin depth of species “s.” In the Hall regime, it is shown that the emergent results are fully consistent with previous numerical and analytical studies, especially in the context of the solarwind. The focus is primarily on the electron inertia regime, where magnetic energy spectra with power-law indexes of -11/3 and -13/3 are always recovered. The latter, in particular, is quite close to recent observational evidence from the solarwind with a potential slope of approximately -4 in this regime. It is thus plausible that these spectra may constitute a part of the (extended) inertial range, as opposed to the standard “dissipation” range paradigm.

Full Text Available The suitability of turbine configurations to different wind resources has been traditionally restricted to considering turbines operating as standalone entities. In this paper, a framework is thus developed to investigate turbine suitability in terms of the minimum cost of energy offered when operating as a group of optimally-micro-sited turbines. The four major steps include: (i characterizing the geographical variation of windregimes in the onshore U.S. market; (ii determining the best performing turbines for different windregimes through wind farm layout optimization; (iii developing a metric to quantify the expected market suitability of available turbine configurations; and (iv exploring the best tradeoffs between the cost and capacity factor yielded by these turbines. One hundred thirty one types of commercial turbines offered by major global manufacturers in 2012 are considered for selection. It is found that, in general, higher rated power turbines with medium tower heights are the most favored. Interestingly, further analysis showed that “rotor diameter/hub height” ratios greater than 1.1 are the least attractive for any of the wind classes. It is also observed that although the “cost-capacity factor” tradeoff curve expectedly shifted towards higher capacity factors with increasing wind class, the trend of the tradeoff curve remained practically similar.

We present two-dimensional fully-kinetic Particle-in-Cell simulations of decaying electromagnetic fluctuations. The computational box is such that wavelengths ranging from electron to ion gyroradii are resolved. The parameters used are realistic for the solarwind, and the ion to electron mass ratio is physical. The understanding of the dissipation of turbulent fluctuations at small scales is thought to be a crucial mechanism for solarwind acceleration and coronal heating. The computational results suggest that a power law cascade of magnetic fluctuations could be sustained up to scales of the electron Larmor radius and smaller. We analyse the simulation results in the light of the Vlasov linear theory, and we comment on the particle heating. The dispersion curves of lightly damped modes in this regime suggest that a linear mechanism could be responsible for the observed steepening of power spectra at electron scales, but a straightforward identification of turbulent fluctuations as an ensemble of linear mod...

This work studies Charon's effects on the Pluto-solarwind interaction using a multifluid MHD model which simulates the interactions of Pluto and Charon with the solarwind as well as with each other. Specifically, it investigates the ionospheric dynamics of a two body system in which either one or both bodies possess an ionosphere. Configurations in which Charon is directly upstream and directly downstream of Pluto are considered. Depending on ionospheric and solarwind conditions, Charon could periodically pass into the solarwind flow upstream of Pluto. The results of this study demonstrate that in these circumstances Charon modifies the upstream flow, both in the case in which Charon possesses an ionosphere, and in the case in which Charon is without an ionosphere. This modification amounts to a change in the gross structure of the interaction region when Charon possesses an ionosphere but is more localized when Charon lacks an ionosphere. Furthermore, evidence is shown that supports Charon acting to partially shield Pluto from the solarwind when it is upstream of Pluto, resulting in a decrease in ionospheric loss by Pluto.

The origin of the Earth water reserves during the evolution of the planet is one of the big miracles in geophysics. Common explanations are storage of water in the Earth mantle at a time when the crust had not yet formed and depositing of water by comets during the time of late heavy bombardement. Both explanations have different problems - especially when comparing with the evolution of Mars and Venus. Here we discuss the possible role of hydrogen collected from the solarwind by the early Earth magnetosphere. While the water production by solarwind capture is very small today it may have been significant during the first billion years after planetary formation because solarwind was much stronger at that time and Earth magnetospheric configuration may have been different. We estimate that the contribution of solarwind hydrogen to the Earth water reserves can be up to 10% when we assume a that the Earth dipole acted as a collector and early solarwind was 1000 times stronger than today. We can not even exc...

Possible components of the ancient solarwind, particularly the N-15/N-14 ratio, are investigated on the basis of lunar microbreccia studies. Nitrogen contents and isotope ratios were determined for Apollo 11 and 15 microbreccia samples by means of vacuum pyrolysis techniques. The Apollo 11 soil breccias, which had been closed to the addition of recent solarwind due to their compaction, are found to contain the lowest N-15/N-14 ratios yet reported for the solarwind, extending the range of variation of the ratio to between a delta N-15 of -190% in the past to +120% at present. Nitrogen isotope analysis of the Apollo 15 drill core, which had undergone two episodes of solarwind exposure, also support the secular variation in the N-15 content of the solarwind, which is attributed to spallation reactions in the sun. The formation of the breccias at the Apollo 11 and 15 sites is discussed on the basis of the observed nitrogen systematics, and differences between N-15 and Ne-21 cosmic ray exposure ages implied are attributed to the diffusive loss of neon from lunar soils.

Full Text Available The time domain sampler (TDS experiment on WIND measures electric and magnetic wave forms with a sampling rate which reaches 120 000 points per second. We analyse here observations made in the solarwind near the Lagrange point L1. In the range of frequencies above the proton plasma frequency fpi and smaller than or of the order of the electron plasma frequency fpe, TDS observed three kinds of electrostatic (e.s. waves: coherent wave packets of Langmuir waves with frequencies f ~fpe, coherent wave packets with frequencies in the ion acoustic range fpi<f < fpe, and more or less isolated non-sinusoidal spikes lasting less than 1 ms. We confirm that the observed frequency of the low frequency (LF ion acoustic wave packets is dominated by the Doppler effect: the wavelengths are short, 10 to 50 electron Debye lengths λD. The electric field in the isolated electrostatic structures (IES and in the LF wave packets is more or less aligned with the solarwind magnetic field. Across the IES, which have a spatial width of the order of ~ 25λD, there is a small but finite electric potential drop, implying an average electric field generally directed away from the Sun. The IES wave forms, which have not been previously reported in the solarwind, are similar, although with a smaller amplitude, to the weak double layers observed in the auroral regions, and to the electrostatic solitary waves observed in other regions in the magnetosphere. We have also studied the solarwind conditions which favour the occurrence of the three kinds of waves: all these e.s. waves are observed more or less continuously in the whole solarwind (except in the densest regions where a parasite prevents the TDS observations. The type (wave packet or IES of the observed LF waves is mainly determined

"Complexity" has become a hot topic in nearly every field of modern physics. Solarwind plasmas are of no exception. Recently, Chang [2002], in analogy with theories developed for phenomena observed in the magnetotail and the auroral zone [Chang, 1999; 2001], demonstrated that the sporadic and localized interactions of magnetic coherent structures arising from plasma resonances could be the origin of "complexity" of nonresonant pseudo-2D spatiotemporal fluctuations in solarwind turbulence and in the coronal hole base. Such nonresonant fluctuations were shown to exist in the solarwind by Matthaeus et al. [1990] in terms of the two-dimensional correlation as a function of distance parallel and perpendicular to the mean magnetic field based on the ISEE-3 magnetometer data. Other evidences indicating the existence of such type of fluctuations in the solarwind have been reported by Tu et al. [1989], Tu and Marsch [1990, 1991], Bruno and Bavassano [1991], Bavassano and Bruno [1992], Bruno et al. [2001], and others. These results explain [Tu and Marsch, 1991] why the Alfvén ratio (a quantitative measure of Alfvénicity) is often found to be less than one in the solarwind [Belcher and Davis 1971, Solodyna et al., 1977, Bruno et al, 1985, Roberts et al., 1990], particularly for the space range farther than 0.3 AU. The above observational results are also consistent with the conclusions obtained from 2D MHD numerical simulations [Matthaeus and Larkin, 1986, Roberts and Goldstein, 1988, Goldstein et al., 1989, Roberts et al., 1991, and Roberts, 1992]. Such findings have led Chang [2002] to suggest the following evolutional scenario for the plasma turbulence in the generic fast solarwind. In and near the coronal hole base, the turbulent fluctuations are predominantly nonresonantly generated by pseudo-2D nonlinear interactions. As the fluctuations emerge from the coronal hole base, they propagate resonantly in the field-aligned direction primarily as Alfvén waves

Plasma from the Sun known as the slow solarwind has been observed far away from where scientists thought it was produced. Now new simulations may have resolved the puzzle of where the slow solarwind comes from and how it escapes the Sun to travel through our solar system.An Origin PuzzleA full view of a coronal hole (dark portion) from SDO. The edges of the coronal hole mark the boundary between open and closed magnetic field lines. [SDO; adapted from Higginson et al. 2017]The Suns atmosphere, known as the corona, is divided into two types of regions based on the behavior of magnetic field lines. In closed-field regions, the magnetic field is firmly anchored in the photosphere at both ends of field lines, so traveling plasma is confined to coronal loops and must return to the Suns surface. In open-field regions, only one end of each magnetic field line is anchored in the photosphere, so plasma is able to stream from the Suns surface out into the solar system.This second type of region known as a coronal hole is thought to be the origin of fast-moving plasma measured in our solar system and known as the fast solarwind. But we also observe a slow solarwind: plasma that moves at speeds of less than 500 km/s.The slow solarwind presents a conundrum. Its observational properties strongly suggest it originates in the hot, closed corona rather than the cooler, open regions. But if the slow solarwind plasma originates in closed-field regions of the Suns atmosphere, then how does it escape from the Sun?Slow Wind from Closed FieldsA team of scientists led by Aleida Higginson (University of Michigan) has now used high-resolution, three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations to show how the slow solarwind can be generated from plasma that starts outin closed-field parts of the Sun.A simulated heliospheric arc, composed of open magnetic field lines. [Higginson et al. 2017]Motions on the Suns surface near the boundary between open and closed-field regions the boundary

A new formula for the solarwind-magnetosphere energy input parameter, P/sub i/, is sought by applying the constraints imposed by dimensional analysis. Applying these constraints yields a general equation for P/sub i/ which is equal to rho V/sup 3/l/sub CF//sup 2/F(M/sub A/,theta) where, rho V/sup 3/ is the solarwind kinetic energy density and l/sub CF//sup 2/ is the scale size of the magnetosphere's effective energy ''collection'' region. The function F which depends on M/sub A/, the Alfven Mach number, and on theta, the interplanetary magnetic field clock angle is included in the general equation for P/sub i/ in order to model the magnetohydrodynamic processes which are responsible for solarwind-magnetosphere energy transfer. By assuming the form of the function F, it is possible to further constrain the formula for P/sub i/. This is accomplished by using solarwind data, geomagnetic activity indices, and simple statistical methods. It is found that P/sub i/ is proportional to (rho V/sup 2/)/sup 1/6/VBG(theta) where, rho V/sup 2/ is the solarwind dynamic pressure and VBG(theta) is a rectified version of the solarwind motional electric field. Furthermore, it is found that G(theta), the gating function which modulates the energy input to the magnetosphere, is well represented by a ''leaky'' rectifier function such as sin/sup 4/(theta/2). This function allows for enhanced energy input when the interplanetary magnetic field is oriented southward. This function also allows for some energy input when the interplanetary magnetic field is oriented northward. 9 refs., 4 figs.

High-speed solarwind streams emanating from coronal holes are frequently impinging on the Earth's magnetosphere causing recurrent, medium-level geomagnetic storm activity. Modeling high-speed solarwind streams is thus an essential element of successful space weather forecasting. Here we evaluate...... high-speed stream forecasts made by the empirical solarwind forecast (ESWF) and the semiempirical Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model based on the in situ plasma measurements from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft for the years 2011 to 2014. While the ESWF makes use of an empirical relation...... between the coronal hole area observed in Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) images and solarwind properties at the near-Earth environment, the WSA model establishes a link between properties of the open magnetic field lines extending from the photosphere to the corona...

We report the results of a long (approximately 100 ks) XMM-Newton observation designed to observe solarwind charge exchange emission (SWCX) from Earth's magnetosheath. By luck, the observation took place during a period of minimal solarwind flux so the SWCX emission was also minimal. Never-the-less, there is a significant if not stunning correlation between the observed O VIII count rate and our model for magnetosheath emission. We also report on the observed O VII and O VII emission.

Historically, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has operated a SolarWind Facility (SWF) to provide long term particle and photon exposure to material samples. The requirements on the particle beam details were not stringent as the cumulative fluence level is the test goal. Motivated by development of the faraday cup instrument on the NASA Solar Probe Plus (SPP) mission, the MSFC SWF has been upgraded to included high fidelity particle beams providing broadbeam ions, broadbeam electrons, and narrow beam protons or ions, which cover a wide dynamic range of solarwind velocity and flux conditions. The large vacuum chamber with integrated cryo-shroud, combined with a 3-axis positioning system, provides an excellent platform for sensor development and qualification. This short paper provides some details of the SWF charged particle beams characteristics in the context of the Solar Probe Plus program requirements. Data will be presented on the flux and energy ranges as well as beam stability.

Extended MHD is a one-fluid model that incorporates two-fluid effects such as electron inertia and the Hall drift. This model is used to construct fully nonlinear Alfv\\'enic wave solutions, and thereby derive the kinetic and magnetic spectra by resorting to a Kolmogorov-like hypothesis based on the constant cascading rates of the energy and generalized helicities of this model. The magnetic and kinetic spectra are derived in the ideal $\\left(k 1/\\lambda_e\\right)$ regimes; $k$ is the wavenumber and $\\lambda_s = c/\\omega_{p s}$ is the skin depth of species `$s$'. In the Hall regime, it is shown that the emergent results are fully consistent with previous numerical and analytical studies, especially in the context of the solarwind. The focus is primarily on the electron inertia regime, where magnetic energy spectra with power-law indexes of $-11/3$ and $-13/3$ are always recovered. The latter, in particular, is quite close to recent observational evidence from the solarwind with a potential slope of approxima...

For the March/April 1991 time period, the alpha/proton abundance ratio, the proton kinetic temperature and speed distributions, and the relative abundance of O(+7) to O(+6) is determined over each 13-minute duty cycle of the SolarWind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICs) experiment on Ulysses. The ratio O(+7)/O(+6) (as a relative measure of ionization temperature) is shown to be useful in identifying possible coronal mass ejection (CME) events. We report measurements of silicon/oxygen abundance ratios and silicon and oxygen charge state distributions in the solarwind during a CME event and compare these compositions to a 'normal' solarwind time period.

We present results from Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry (LFM) global, three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the solarwind-magnetosphere interaction. We use these simulations to investigate the role that solarwind dynamic pressure fluctuations play in the generation of magnetospheric ultra-low frequency (ULF) pulsations. The simulations presented in this study are driven with idealized solarwind input conditions. In four of the simulations, we introduce monochromatic ULF fluctuations in the upstream solarwind dynamic pressure. In the fifth simulation, we introduce a continuum of ULF frequencies in the upstream solarwind dynamic pressure fluctuations. In this numerical experiment, the idealized nature of the solarwind driving conditions allows us to study the magnetospheric response to only a fluctuating upstream dynamic pressure, while holding all other solarwind driving parameters constant. The simulation results suggest that ULF fluctuations in the solarwind dynamic pressure can drive magnet...

High penetrations of wind and solar generation on power systems are resulting in increasing curtailment. Wind and solar integration studies predict increased curtailment as penetration levels grow. This paper examines experiences with curtailment on bulk power systems internationally. It discusse...

Data are being collected at 17 sites to delineate a baseline for the wind and solar resource across Texas. Wind data are being collected at 10, 25, and 40 m (in some cases at 50 m) to determine wind shear and power at hub heights of large turbines. Many of the sites are located in areas of predicted terrain enhancement. The typical day in a month for power and wind turbine output was calculated for selected sites and combination of sites; distributed systems. Major result to date is that there is the possibility of load matching in South Texas during the summer months, even though the average values by month indicate a low wind potential.

We critically examine recent claims of a high solar metallicity by von Steiger & Zurbuchen (2016, vSZ16) based on in situ measurements of the solarwind, rather than the standard spectroscopically inferred abundances (Asplund et al. 2009, hereafter AGSS09). We test the claim by Vagnozzi et al. (2016) that a composition based on the solarwind enables one to construct a standard solar model in agreement with helioseismological observations and thus solve the decades-old solar modelling problem. We show that, although some helioseismological observables are improved compared to models computed with spectroscopic abundances, most are in fact worse. The high abundance of refractory elements leads to an overproduction of neutrinos, with a predicted 8B flux that is nearly twice its observed value, and 7Be and CNO fluxes that are experimentally ruled out at high confidence. A combined likelihood analysis shows that models using the vSZ16 abundances are worse than AGSS09 despite a higher metallicity. We also present astrophysical and spectroscopic arguments showing the vSZ16 composition to be an implausible representation of the solar interior, identifying the first ionization potential effect in the outer solar atmosphere and wind as the likely culprit.

A scaled wind farm, with 100 porous disk models of wind turbines, is used to study the effect of wind farm layout on the wind farm power output and its variability, in a wind tunnel study. The wind farm consists of 20 rows and 5 columns. The porous disk models have a diameter of 0 . 03 m and are instrumented with strain gages to measure the thrust force, as a surrogate for wind turbine power output. The frequency response of the measurements goes up to the natural frequency of the models and allows studying the spatio-temporal characteristics of the power output for different layouts. A variety of layouts are considered by shifting the individual rows in the spanwise direction. The reference layout has a regular streamwise spacing of Sx / D = 7 and a spanwise spacing of Sy / D = 5 . The parameter space is further expanded by considering layouts with an uneven streamwise spacing: Sx / D = 3 . 5 & 10 . 5 and Sx / D = 1 . 5 & 12 . 5 . We study how the mean row power changes as a function of wind farm layout and investigate the appearance of an asymptotic limiting behavior as previously described in the literature by application of the top-down model for the spatially averaged wind farm - boundary layer interaction. Work supported by ERC (Grant No. 306471, the ActiveWindFarms project) and by NSF (OISE-1243482, the WINDINSPIRE project).

The expansion of a coronal hole filled with a discrete number of higher density coronal plumes is simulated using a time-dependent two-dimensional code. A solarwind model including an exponential coronal heating function and a flux of Alfven waves propagating both inside and outside the structures is taken as a basic state. Different plasma plume profiles are obtained by using different scale heights for the heating rates. Remote sensing and solarwind in situ observations are used to constrain the parameter range of the study. Time dependence due to plume ignition and disappearance is also discussed. Velocity differences of the order of approximately 50 km/s, such as those found in microstreams in the high-speed solarwind, may be easily explained by slightly different heat deposition profiles in different plumes. Statistical pressure balance in the fast wind data may be masked by the large variety of body and surface waves which the higher density filaments may carry, so the absence of pressure balance in the microstreams should not rule out their interpretation as the extension of coronal plumes into interplanetary space. Mixing of plume-interplume material via the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability seems to be possible within the parameter ranges of the models defined here, only at large di stances from the Sun, beyond 0.2-0.3 AU. Plasma and composition measurements in the inner heliosphere, such as those which will become available with Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe Plus, should therefore definitely be able to identify plume remnants in the solarwind.

High-speed solarwind streams emanating from coronal holes are frequently impinging on the Earth's magnetosphere causing recurrent, medium-level geomagnetic storm activity. Modeling high-speed solarwind streams is thus an essential element of successful space weather forecasting. Here we evaluate high-speed stream forecasts made by the empirical solarwind forecast (ESWF) and the semiempirical Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model based on the in situ plasma measurements from the ACE spacecraft for the years 2011 to 2014. While the ESWF makes use of an empirical relation between the coronal hole area observed in Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) images and solarwind properties at the near-Earth environment, the WSA model establishes a link between properties of the open magnetic field lines extending from the photosphere to the corona and the background solarwind conditions. We found that both solarwind models are capable of predicting the large-scale features of the observed sol...

In this paper we present the new concept of combined solar and wind energy systems for buildings applications. Photovoltaics (PV) and small wind turbines (WTs) can be install on buildings, in case of sufficient wind potential, providing the building with electricity. PVs can be combined with thermal collectors to form the hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) systems. The PVs (or the PV/Ts) and WT subsystems can supplement each other to cover building electrical load. In case of using PV/T collectors, the surplus of electricity, if not used or stored in batteries, can increase the temperature of the thermal storage tank of the solar thermal unit. The description of the experimental set-up of the suggested PV/T/WT system and experimental results are presented. In PV/T/WT systems the output from the solar part depends on the sunshine time and the output of the wind turbine part depends on the wind speed and is obtained any time of day or night. The use of the three subsystems can cover a great part of building energy load, contributing to conventional energy saving and environment protection. The PV/T/WT systems are considered suitable in rural and remote areas with electricity supply from stand-alone units or mini-grid connection. PV/T/WT systems can also be used in typical grid connected applications.

Turbulence Heating ObserveR (THOR) is the first mission concept dedicated to the study of plasma turbulence. We present the Cold SolarWind (CSW) instrument that is being designed for THOR. CSW will measure the full three dimensional distribution function of solarwind protons and alphas with unprecedented accuracies. It will measure solarwind proton distributions down to at least 50 ms with energy resolution of 7% and angular resolution of 1.5°. CSW is based on a top-hat electrostatic analyzer (with very large geometric factor) design with deflectors at the entrance. The particle detection system uses Channel Electron Multipliers (CEM) associated with an analog front end Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). CSW electronics comprises a fast sweeping high voltage board, as well as an FPGA and low voltage power supply boards to perform its operations. CSW is designed to address many of the key science objectives of THOR, in particular regarding ion-scale kinetic aspects of solarwind turbulence.

Action of solarwind on arbitrarily shaped interplanetary dust particle is investigated. The final relativistically covariant equation of motion of the particle contains both orbital evolution and change of particle's mass. Non-radial solarwind velocity vector is also included. The covariant equation of motion reduces to the Poynting-Robertson effect in the limiting case when spherical particle is treated, the speed of the incident solarwind corpuscles tends to the speed of light and the corpuscles spread radially from the Sun. The results of quantum mechanics have to be incorporated into the physical considerations, in order to obtain the limiting case. The condition for the solarwind effect on motion of spherical interplanetary dust particle is $\\vec{p}'_{out}$ $=$ (1 $-$ $\\sigma'_{pr} / \\sigma'_{tot}$) $\\vec{p}'_{in}$, where $\\vec{p}'_{in}$ and $\\vec{p}'_{out}$ are incoming and outgoing radiation momenta (per unit time) measured in the proper frame of reference of the particle; $\\sigma'_{pr}$ and $\\sigm...

This is a comprehensive, fairly technical book about renewable forms of energy--solar, water, wind, and biofuels. The biofuels section covers biomass energy, agriculture, aquaculture, alcohol, methane, and wood. The focus is on small-scale systems which can be applied to the needs of the individual, small group, or community. More than one-fourth…

This is a comprehensive, fairly technical book about renewable forms of energy--solar, water, wind, and biofuels. The biofuels section covers biomass energy, agriculture, aquaculture, alcohol, methane, and wood. The focus is on small-scale systems which can be applied to the needs of the individual, small group, or community. More than one-fourth…

Full Text Available In this review we will focus on a topic of fundamental importance for both astrophysics and plasma physics, namely the occurrence of large-amplitude low-frequency fluctuations of the fields that describe the plasma state. This subject will be treated within the context of the expanding solarwind and the most meaningful advances in this research field will be reported emphasizing the results obtained in the past decade or so. As a matter of fact, Helios inner heliosphere and Ulysses' high latitude observations, recent multi-spacecrafts measurements in the solarwind (Cluster four satellites and new numerical approaches to the problem, based on the dynamics of complex systems, brought new important insights which helped to better understand how turbulent fluctuations behave in the solarwind. In particular, numerical simulations within the realm of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD turbulence theory unraveled what kind of physical mechanisms are at the basis of turbulence generation and energy transfer across the spectral domain of the fluctuations. In other words, the advances reached in these past years in the investigation of solarwind turbulence now offer a rather complete picture of the phenomenological aspect of the problem to be tentatively presented in a rather organic way.

The effect of nonradial component of solarwind is discussed from the qualitative point of view. It is shown that the direction of nonradial component is opposite in comparison with the direction used in papers dealing with orbital evolution of meteoroids.

Wind loads on solar energy systems are not covered by current wind loading standards. This paper describes results of a parametric study into the wind loads on solar energy systems, which are placed on flat roofs. Wind tunnel measurements have been carried out on a number of configurations. The resu

Wind loads on solar energy systems are not covered by current wind loading standards. This paper describes results of a parametric study into the wind loads on solar energy systems, which are placed on flat roofs. Wind tunnel measurements have been carried out on a number of configurations. The resu

Hourly wind-speed data at four meteorological observatories (Quetta, Karachi, Peshawar, and Lahore) in Pakistan have been analysed to determine monthly and annual wind power and these are then compared with the monthly mean solar radiation energies for the period 1980-1984. The monthly average wind speeds for the four stations range from 2.5 to 4.4, 2.75 to 6.7, 0.6 to 1.7, and 0.7 to 1.6 m/sec while the solar radiation varies from 3.6 to 7.65, 3.39 to 6.31, 2.4 to 6.35, and 2.8 to 6.27 kWh/m[sup 2], respectively. (author)

Full Text Available Kinetic plasma physics of the solar corona and solarwind are reviewed with emphasis on the theoretical understanding of the in situ measurements of solarwind particles and waves, as well as on the remote-sensing observations of the solar corona made by means of ultraviolet spectroscopy and imaging. In order to explain coronal and interplanetary heating, the microphysics of the dissipation of various forms of mechanical, electric and magnetic energy at small scales (e.g., contained in plasma waves, turbulences or non-uniform flows must be addressed. We therefore scrutinise the basic assumptions underlying the classical transport theory and the related collisional heating rates, and also describe alternatives associated with wave-particle interactions. We elucidate the kinetic aspects of heating the solar corona and interplanetary plasma through Landau- and cyclotron-resonant damping of plasma waves, and analyse in detail wave absorption and micro instabilities. Important aspects (virtues and limitations of fluid models, either single- and multi-species or magnetohydrodynamic and multi-moment models, for coronal heating and solarwind acceleration are critically discussed. Also, kinetic model results which were recently obtained by numerically solving the Vlasov–Boltzmann equation in a coronal funnel and hole are presented. Promising areas and perspectives for future research are outlined finally.

Full Text Available The electric solarwind sail (E-sail is a new type of propellantless propulsion system for Solar System transportation, which uses the natural solarwind to produce spacecraft propulsion. The E-sail consists of thin centrifugally stretched tethers that are kept charged by an onboard electron gun and, as such, experience Coulomb drag through the high-speed solarwind plasma stream. This paper discusses a mass breakdown and a performance model for an E-sail spacecraft that hosts a mission-specific payload of prescribed mass. In particular, the model is able to estimate the total spacecraft mass and its propulsive acceleration as a function of various design parameters such as the number of tethers and their length. A number of subsystem masses are calculated assuming existing or near-term E-sail technology. In light of the obtained performance estimates, an E-sail represents a promising propulsion system for a variety of transportation needs in the Solar System.

We employ a new NARMAX (Nonlinear Auto-Regressive Moving Average with eXogenous inputs) code to disentangle the time-varying relationship between the solarwind and SYM-H. The NARMAX method has previously been used to formulate a Dst model, using a preselected solarwind coupling function. In this work, which uses the higher-resolution SYM-H in place of Dst, we are able to reveal the individual components of different solarwind-magnetosphere interaction processes as they contribute to the geomagnetic disturbance. This is achieved with a graphics processing unit (GPU)-based NARMAX code that is around 10 orders of magnitude faster than previous efforts from 2005, before general-purpose programming on GPUs was possible. The algorithm includes a composite cost function, to minimize overfitting, and iterative reorthogonalization, which reduces computational errors in the most critical calculations by a factor of ˜106. The results show that negative deviations in SYM-H following a southward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) are first a measure of the increased magnetic flux in the geomagnetic tail, observed with a delay of 20-30 min from the time the solarwind hits the bow shock. Terms with longer delays are found which represent the dipolarization of the magnetotail, the injections of particles into the ring current, and their subsequent loss by flowout through the dayside magnetopause. Our results indicate that the contribution of magnetopause currents to the storm time indices increase with solarwind electric field, E = v × B. This is in agreement with previous studies that have shown that the magnetopause is closer to the Earth when the IMF is in the tangential direction.

In November 1999, four permanent surface stations were installed in the vicinity of the surface ozone monitoring station on the summit of the Cerro Tololo (2200 m amsl) at 30 S. These stations were used to study the atmospheric flow conditions which are important for the interpretation of the ozone measurements at Cerro Tololo. Addi- tionally, radiosonde ascents were performed in March 2000 near the coast and about 60 km inland. Different windregimes were distinguished. Above 4 km, large-scale westerly winds prevailed, while northerly winds were observed in a band along the coastline between 2 km and 4 km height. The upper boundary of the northerly windregime corresponded with the mean height of the Andes. This windregime resulted from the westerly winds being blocked and forced to flow parallel to the Andes (when Froude number Fr < 1). The phenomenon was also confirmed by model simulations. Seasonally varying thermally induced valley winds and a sea breeze developed be- low the northerly windregime. In summer, the valley winds reached the Cerro Tololo. Diurnal variation of the top of the valley winds also influenced the lower boundary of the northerly windregime, which was less than 2 km amsl during the night and greater than 2 km amsl during the day. Thus, this observational and modeling study has shown that in summer the baseline ozone monitoring site at Cerro Tololo can be contaminated by polluted air that is transported from the plains by the thermally induced wind systems.

Solar cycle variations in solar radiation create notable density changes in the Martian ionosphere. In addition to this long-term variability, there are numerous short-term and non-recurrent solar events that hit Mars which need to be considered, such as Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections (ICMEs), Co-Rotation Interaction Regions (CIRs), solar flares, or solarwind high speed streams. The response of the Martian plasma system to each of these events is often unusual, especially during the long period of extreme low solar activity in 2008 and 2009. This work shows the long-term solar cycle impact on the ionosphere of Mars using data from The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS), and The Analyzer of Space Plasma and Energetic Atoms (ASPERA-3), and with empirical and numerical models on Mars Express. Particular attention is given to the different ionospheric responses observed during the last, extended solar minimum. Mars' ionospheric response followed a similar pattern to the response observed in the Earth's ionosphere, despite the large differences related to the inner-origin of the magnetic field of both planets. The ionospheric temperature was cooler, the topside scale height was smaller and almost constant with altitude, the secondary ionospheric layer practically disappeared and the whole atmospheric total electron content (TEC) suffered an extreme reduction of about 30-40%, not predicted before by models. Moreover, there is a larger probability for the induced magnetic field to be present in the ionosphere, than in other phases of the solar cycle. The short-term variability is also addressed with the study of an ICME followed by a fast stream that hit Mars in March 2008, where solarwind data are provided by ACE and STEREO-B and supported by simulations using the WSA-ENLIL Model. The solarwind conditions lead to the formation of a CIR centred on the interface of the fast and the slow solarwind streams. Mars' system reacted to

While the source of the fast solarwind is well understood to be linked to coronal holes, the source of the slow solarwind has remained elusive. A distinguishing characteristic of the slow solarwind is the high variability of the plasma parameters, such as magnetic field, velocity, density, composition, and charge state. Many previous studies of the slow solarwind have examined trends in the composition and charge states over long time scales and using data with comparatively low temporal resolution. In this study, we take advantage of high time resolution (12 min) measurements of the charge-state abundances recently reprocessed by the ACE SWICS science team to probe the timescales of solarwind variability of coherent structures at relatively small scales (<2000 Mm, or ~ 90 minutes at slow wind speeds). We use an interval of slow solarwind containing quasi pressure-balanced, periodic number density structures previously studied by Kepko et al and shown to be important in solarwind-magnetospheric coupling. The combination of high temporal resolution composition measurements and the clearly identified boundaries of the periodic structures allows us to probe the elemental slow solarwind flux tubes/structures. We use this train of 2000Mm periodic density structures as tracers of solarwind origin and/or acceleration. We find that each 2000 Mm parcel of slow solarwind, though its speed is steady, exhibits the complete range of charge state and composition variations expected for the entire range of slow solarwind, in a repeated sequence. Each parcel cycles through three states: 1) 'normal' slow wind, 2) compositionally slow wind with very high density, and 3) compositionally fast but typical slow solarwind density. We conclude by suggesting these structures form elemental building blocks of the slow solarwind, and discuss whether it is necessary to decouple separately the process(es) responsible for the release and acceleration.

A connection between kinetic processes and intermittent turbulence is observed in the solarwind plasma using measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. In particular, kinetic effects such as temperature anisotropy and plasma heating are concentrated near coherent structures, such as current sheets, which are non-uniformly distributed in space. Furthermore, these coherent structures are preferentially found in plasma unstable to the mirror and firehose instabilities. The inhomogeneous heating in these regions, which is present in both the magnetic field parallel and perpendicular temperature components, results in protons at least 3--4 times hotter than under typical stable plasma conditions. These results offer a new understanding of kinetic processes in a turbulent regime, where linear Vlasov theory is not sufficient to explain the inhomogeneous plasma dynamics operating near non-Gaussian structures.

A connection between kinetic processes and intermittent turbulence is observed in the solarwind plasma using measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 A.U. In particular, kinetic effects such as temperature anisotropy and plasma heating are concentrated near coherent structures, such as current sheets, which are nonuniformly distributed in space. Furthermore, these coherent structures are preferentially found in plasma unstable to the mirror and firehose instabilities. The inhomogeneous heating in these regions, which is present in both the magnetic field parallel and perpendicular temperature components, results in protons at least 3-4 times hotter than under typical stable plasma conditions. These results offer a new understanding of kinetic processes in a turbulent regime, where linear Vlasov theory is not sufficient to explain the inhomogeneous plasma dynamics operating near non-Gaussian structures.

Recent work on solarwind plasma correlations using data from several widely-separated spacecraft (IMP 8, INTERBALL-1, WIND, and ISEE-3) has shown that, for 6-hour periods, the average plasma correlation is ~0.7. The focus of these studies has been directed toward a statistical understanding of gross solarwind correlation behavior. In all correlations examined, lower average correlations are caused by the presence of many points from the low correlation subpopulation; nevertheless, data points from the high correlation population are still present. No single organizational factor has yet been found which adequately separates low-correlation periods from high-correlation periods. Some of the spread in correlations is due to the spatial orientations and dimensions of solarwind structures, and thus to the locational alignments of the spacecraft being correlated, but this does not adequately explain all the good or poor correlations since sometimes three nearby spacecraft show poor correlations, while sometimes three widely-separated space-craft show good correlations. Thus, in order to understand the underlying physics, detailed investigation of individual cases has been undertaken. These results will be important in assigning quality measures to space weather predictions using satellite measurements taken at L1, for example.

We give a statistical characterization of states with nonzero winding number in the Phase Turbulence (PT) regime of the one-dimensional Complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. We find that states with winding number larger than a critical one are unstable, in the sense that they decay to states with smaller winding number. The transition from Phase to Defect Turbulence is interpreted as an ergodicity breaking transition which occurs when the range of stable winding numbers vanishes. Asymptotically stable states which are not spatio-temporally chaotic are described within the PT regime of nonzero winding number.

The steady-state model recently put forth for the solarwind electron velocity distribution function during quiet time conditions, was originally composed of three population electrons (core, halo, and superhalo) with the core remaining nonresonant with any plasma waves while the halo and superhalo separately maintained steady-state resonance with whistler- and Langmuir-frequency range fluctuations, respectively. However, a recent paper demonstrates that whistler-range fluctuations in fact have no significant contribution. The present paper represents a consummation of the model in that a self-consistent model of the suprathermal electron population, which encompasses both the halo and the superhalo, is constructed solely on the basis of the Langmuir fluctuation spectrum. Numerical solutions to steady-state particle and wave kinetic equations are obtained on the basis of an initial trial electron distribution and Langmuir wave spectrum. Such a finding offers a self-consistent explanation for the observed steady-state electron distribution in the solarwind.

A kinetic description of Alfvén-cyclotron magnetic fluctuations for anisotropic electron-proton quasistable plasmas is studied. An analytical treatment, based on the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, consistently shows that spontaneous fluctuations in plasmas with stable distributions significantly contribute to the observed magnetic fluctuations in the solarwind, as seen, for example, in [S. D. Bale et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 211101 (2009)], even far below from the instability thresholds. Furthermore, these results, which do not require any adjustable parameters or wave excitations, are consistent with the results provided by hybrid simulations. It is expected that this analysis contributes to our understanding of the nature of magnetic fluctuations in the solarwind.

Two isolated solarwind disturbances about 5 minutes in duration were detected aboard the Russian spacecraft Phobos-2 upon its crossing the wake of the martian moon Deimos about 15,000 kilometers downstream from the moon on 1 February 1989. These plasma and magnetic events are interpreted as the inbound and outbound crossings of a Mach cone that is formed as a result of an effective interaction of the solarwind with Deimos. Possible mechanisms such as remanent magnetization, cometary type interaction caused by heavy ion or charged dust production, and unipolar induction resulting from the finite conductivity of the body are discussed. Although none of the present models is fully satisfactory, neutral gas emission through water loss by Deimos at a rate of about 10(23) molecules per second, combined with a charged dust coma, is favored.

A review of spectral anisotropy and variance anisotropy for solarwind fluctuations is given, with the discussion covering inertial range and dissipation range scales. For the inertial range, theory, simulations and observations are more or less in accord, in that fluctuation energy is found to be primarily in modes with quasi-perpendicular wavevectors (relative to a suitably defined mean magnetic field), and also that most of the fluctuation energy is in the vector components transverse to the mean field. Energy transfer in the parallel direction and the energy levels in the parallel components are both relatively weak. In the dissipation range, observations indicate that variance anisotropy tends to decrease towards isotropic levels as the electron gyroradius is approached; spectral anisotropy results are mixed. Evidence for and against wave interpretations and turbulence interpretations of these features will be discussed. We also present new simulation results concerning evolution of variance anisotropy for different classes of initial conditions, each with typical background solarwind parameters.

Present study probes temporal changes in the area and radiative flux of near equatorial coronal hole associated with solarwind parameters such as wind speed, density, magnetic field and temperature. Using high temporal resolution data from SDO/AIA for the two wave-lengths 193 Å and 211 Å, area and radiative flux of coronal holes are extracted and are examined for the association with high speed solarwind parameters. We find a strong association between different parameters of coronal hole and solarwind. For both the wavelength bands, we also compute coronal hole radiative energy near the earth and it is found to be of similar order as that of solarwind energy. However, for the wavelength 193 Å, owing to almost similar magnitudes of energy emitted by coronal hole and energy due to solarwind, it is conjectured that solarwind might have originated around the same height where 193 Å line is formed in the corona.

In this paper we study the temperatures of electrons convected with the solarwind to large solar distances and finally transported over the solarwind termination shock. Nearly nothing, unless at high energies in the cosmic ray regime, is known about the thermodynamical behaviour of these distant electrons from in situ plasma observations. Hence it is tacitly assumed these electrons, due to their adiabatic behaviour and vanishing heat conduction or energization processes, have rapidly cooled off to very low temperatures once they eventually arrive at the solarwind termination shock (at about 100 AU). In this paper we show that such electrons, however, at their passage over the termination shock due to the shock-electric field action undergo an overadiabatic heating and therefore appear on the downstream side as a substantially heated plasma species. Looking quantitatively into this heating process we find that solarwind electrons achieve temperatures of the order of 2-4 x 10{sup 6} K downstream of the termination shock, depending on the upstream solarwind bulk velocity and the shock compression ratio. Hence these electrons therewith play an important dynamical role in structuring this shock and determining the downstream plasma flow properties. Furthermore, they present an additional ionization source for incoming neutral interstellar hydrogen and excite X-ray emission. They also behave similar to cosmic ray electrons and extend to some limited region upstream of the shock of the order of 0.1 AU by spatial diffusion and thereby also modify the upstream solarwind properties. (orig.)

The transport of matter and radiation in the solarwind and terrestrial magnetosphere is a complicated problem involving competing processes of charged particles interacting with electric and magnetic fields. Given the rapid expansion of the solarwind, it would be expected that superthermal electrons originating in the corona would cool rapidly as a function of distance to the Sun. However, this is not observed, and various models have been proposed as candidates for heating the solarwind. In the compressional pumping mechanism explored by Fisk and Gloeckler particles are accelerated by random compressions by the interplanetary wave turbulence. This theory explores diffusion due to spatial non-uniformities and provides a mechanism for redistributing particle. For investigation of a related but different heating mechanism, magnetic pumping, in our work we include diffusion of anisotropic features that develops in velocity space. The mechanism allows energy to be transferred to the particles directly from the turbulence. Guided by kinetic simulations a theory is derived for magnetic pumping. At the heart of this work is a generalization of the Parker Equation to capture the role of the pressure anisotropy during the pumping process. Supported by NASA grant NNX15AJ73G.

On March 31st. 2001, a coronal mass ejection pushed the subsolar magnetopause to the vicinity of geosynchronous orbit at 6.6 RE. The NASA/GSFC Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMe) employed a global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model to simulate the solarwind-magnetosphere interaction during the peak of this geomagnetic storm. Robertson et aL then modeled the expected 50ft X-ray emission due to solarwind charge exchange with geocoronal neutrals in the dayside cusp and magnetosheath. The locations of the bow shock, magnetopause and cusps were clearly evident in their simulations. Another geomagnetic storm took place on July 14, 2000 (Bastille Day). We again modeled X-ray emission due to solarwind charge exchange, but this time as observed from a moving spacecraft. This paper discusses the impact of spacecraft location on observed X-ray emission and the degree to which the locations of the bow shock and magnetopause can be detected in images.

Correlation analysis of solarwind parameters, namely solarwind velocity, pro- ton density, proton temperature and mean interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) from the ACE spacecraft data near Earth, was done. To our best knowledge, this study is a novel one since we consider here only the parameters inside the solarwind, including the mean IMF and, hence, the solarwind is a self consistent system. We have proposed a Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) model for the prediction of the response variable (solarwind velocity) using the parameters proton density, proton temperature and mean IMF mea- sured as dally averages. About 60% of the observed value can be predicted using this model. It is shown that, in general, the correlation between solarwind parameters is sig- nificant. A deviation from the prediction at the solar maximum is interpreted. These results are verified by a graphical method.

Mercury's magnetospheric cusp results from the interaction between the planetary intrinsic magnetic field and the solarwind. In this study, we assemble 2848 orbits of MESSENGER data for a comprehensive assessment of solarwind control on Mercury's cusp. We propose and validate an IMF estimation approach for the cusp transit, and construct an index to measure the magnetic disturbance. The index maximizes within the cusp, more intense than in the adjacent magnetosphere by several orders of magnitude. We develop an empirical model of the index as a function of IMFvector and Mercury's solar orbital phase. The model is used to study the cusp activity under different conditions. Comparisons reveal the cusp activity is more intense and extends further in local time, under antisunward IMF (IMFx0), under southward IMF (IMFz0), and when Mercury orbits at its perihelion than at aphelion. Besides, the cusp shifts azimuthally towards dawn when IMF reverses from westward (IMFy0), and when Mercury approaches its perihelion. The IMFx dependence is consistent with existing observations and simulations which are ascribed to the asymmetry of dayside magnetospheric configuration between sunward and anti-sunward IMF conditions. We explain the IMFy and IMFz dependences in terms of component reconnection of the magnetospheric field merging with By-dominant and Bz-dominant IMF, respectively. The control of the Mercury solar orbit phase on the intensity and local time location of the disturbance peak are possibly arising from the modulations of the heliocentric distance on the solarwind ram pressure. The existence of significant IMF dependence suggests the IMF orientation plays a role in the convection configuration at Mercury. The IMFy-dependence at Mercury is opposite to that at Earth, suggesting that component reconnection at the dayside magnetopause is more important in the Hermean system than in the terrestrial one. This also implies that reconnection occurs at lower magnetic shear

We critically examine recent claims of a high solar metallicity by von Steiger \\& Zurbuchen (2016; vSZ16) based on in situ measurements of the solarwind, rather than the standard spectroscopically-inferred abundances (Asplund et al. 2009). We test the claim by Vagnozzi et al. (2016) that a composition based on the solarwind enables one to construct a standard solar model in agreement with helioseismological observations and thus solve the decades-old solar modelling problem. We show that, although some helioseismological observables are improved compared to models computed with established abundances, most are in fact worse. The high abundance of refractory elements leads to an overproduction of neutrinos, with a predicted $^8$B flux that is nearly twice its observed value, and $^7$Be and CNO fluxes that are experimentally ruled out at high confidence. A combined likelihood analysis shows that models using the vSZ16 abundances fare much worse than AGSS09 despite a higher metallicity. We also present ast...

We use dual-site radio observations of interplanetary scintillation (IPS) with extremely long baselines (ELB) to examine meridional flow characteristics of the ambient fast solarwind at plane-of-sky heliocentric distances of 24-85 solar radii (R\\odot). Our results demonstrate an equatorwards deviation of 3-4{\\deg} in the bulk fast solarwind flow direction over both northern and southern solar hemispheres during different times in the declining phase of Solar Cycle 23.

The sun and the solarwind are considered in terms of the 'ballerina' model first proposed by Alfven (1977), taking into account high speed streams, the slow solarwind, stream-stream interactions, the relation of streams and magnetic structure, and transients caused by solar activity. The main features of the solarwind behavior are illustrated with the aid of data, covering one complete solar rotation in 1974/1975, which were obtained with instruments aboard the Helios-1 solar probe. It is pointed out that the solarwind acts like a huge buffer pushing onto the earth's magnetosphere with a highly variable pressure. Of the energy in the highly variable solarwind reservoir only a tiny fraction is absorbed by the magnetosphere in an obviously very nonstationary way.

The sun and the solarwind are considered in terms of the 'ballerina' model first proposed by Alfven (1977), taking into account high speed streams, the slow solarwind, stream-stream interactions, the relation of streams and magnetic structure, and transients caused by solar activity. The main features of the solarwind behavior are illustrated with the aid of data, covering one complete solar rotation in 1974/1975, which were obtained with instruments aboard the Helios-1 solar probe. It is pointed out that the solarwind acts like a huge buffer pushing onto the earth's magnetosphere with a highly variable pressure. Of the energy in the highly variable solarwind reservoir only a tiny fraction is absorbed by the magnetosphere in an obviously very nonstationary way.

The Sun is the closest star to our planet and it is the most studied, perhaps, there exist too much procesess not-understood. One of the solar processes that have a direct interaction with the earth is the solarwind. The solarwind is defined as the plasma expulsed from the solar atmosphere, this wind was cataloged and is considered that have three components: - Passive solarwind: Is the constant component of the solarwind. - Supersonic and quasistady flux. - Sporadic supersonic flux. We p...

We analyse the potential of the electric solarwind sail for solar system space missions. Applications studied include fly-by missions to terrestrial planets (Venus, Mars and Phobos, Mercury) and asteroids, missions based on non-Keplerian orbits (orbits that can be maintained only by applying continuous propulsive force), one-way boosting to outer solar system, off-Lagrange point space weather forecasting and low-cost impactor probes for added science value to other missions. We also discuss the generic idea of data clippers (returning large volumes of high resolution scientific data from distant targets packed in memory chips) and possible exploitation of asteroid resources. Possible orbits were estimated by orbit calculations assuming circular and coplanar orbits for planets. Some particular challenge areas requiring further research work and related to some more ambitious mission scenarios are also identified and discussed.

Although the slow solarwind has been studied for decades with both in situ and remote sensing observations, its origin is still a matter of intense debate. In the standard quasi-steady model, the slow wind is postulated to originate near coronal hole boundaries that define topologically well-behaved separatrices between open and closed field regions. In the interchange model, on the other hand, the slow wind is postulated to originate on open flux that is dynamically diffusing throughout the seemingly closed-field corona. We argue in favor of the quasi-steady scenario and propose that the slow wind is due to two effects: First, the open-closed boundary is highly complex due to the complexity of the photospheric flux distribution. Second, this boundary is continuously driven by the transport of magnetic helicity from the closed field region into the open. The implications of this model for the structure and dynamics of the corona and slow wind are discussed, and observational tests of the model are presented. This work has been supported, in part, by the NASA LWS, HTP, and SR&T programs.

The He-4 and Ne-20 contents in sections of the Surveyor 3 support strut samples were determined by optical and scanning electron microscopy and are compared to the results of the Apollo solarwind composition (SWC) experiments. The He-4/Ne-20 ratio in the samples from the sunlit side of the strut was approximately 300; the ratios determined in Apollo 12 lunar fines and SWC foil were below 100. The He-4/He-3 ratios were also determined, and the ratio obtained from Surveyor 3 material is higher than those found with Apollo 11 and 12 SWC experiments. The effects of spallation by cosmic rays or solar protons, stripping by cosmic ray or energetic solar alpha particles, recycling of solarwind He and radiogenic Ne, He from terrestrial atmosphere, mass discrimination near the moon, mass dependence of trapping probability, diffusion, and contamination by lunar dust are considered.

Turbulence in the solarwind can play essential roles in the heating of coronal and solarwind plasma and the acceleration of the solarwind and energetic particles. Turbulence sources are not well understood and thought to be partly enhanced by interaction with the large-scale inhomogeneity of the solarwind and the interplanetary magnetic field and/or transported from the solar corona. To investigate the interaction with background inhomogeneity and the turbulence sources, we have developed a new 3D MHD model that includes the transport and dissipation of turbulence using the theoretical model of Zank et al. We solve for the temporal and spatial evolution of three moments or variables, the energy in the forward and backward fluctuating modes and the residual energy and their three corresponding correlation lengths. The transport model is coupled to our 3D model of the inhomogeneous solarwind. We present results of the coupled solarwind-turbulence model assuming a simple tilted dipole magnetic configuration that mimics solar minimum conditions, together with several comparative intermediate cases. By considering eight possible solarwind and turbulence source configurations, we show that the large-scale solarwind and IMF inhomogeneity and the strength of the turbulence sources significantly affect the distribution of turbulence in the heliosphere within 6 au. We compare the predicted turbulence distribution results from a complete solar minimum model with in situ measurements made by the Helios and Ulysses spacecraft, finding that the synthetic profiles of the turbulence intensities show reasonable agreement with observations.

The sun as an oscillator produces frequencies which propagate in the heliosphere, via solarwind, to the terrestrial magnetosphere. We searched for those frequencies in the parameters of the near Earth solar plasma and the geomagnetic indices for the past four solar cycles. The solarwind parameters used in this work are the interplanetary magnetic field, plasma beta, Alfven Mach number, solarwind speed, plasma temperature, plasma pressure, plasma density and the geomagnetic indices DST, AE, Ap and Kp. We found out that each parameter of the solarwind exhibit certain periodicities which di?erentiate in each cycle. Our results indicate intermittent periodicities in our data, some of them shared between the solarwind parameters and geomagnetic indices.

The Genesis mission collected solarwind for 27 months at Earth-Sun L1 on both passive and active collectors carried inside of a Science Canister, which was cleaned and assembled in an ISO Class 4 cleanroom prior to launch. The primary passive collectors, 271 individual hexagons and 30 half-hexagons of semiconductor materials, are described in. Since the hard landing reduced the 301 passive collectors to many thousand smaller fragments, characterization and posting in the online catalog remains a work in progress, with about 19% of the total area characterized to date. Other passive collectors, surfaces of opportunity, have been added to the online catalog. For species needing to be concentrated for precise measurement (e.g. oxygen and nitrogen isotopes) an energy-independent parabolic ion mirror focused ions onto a 6.2 cm diameter target. The target materials, as recovered after landing, are described in. The online catalog of these solarwind collectors, a work in progress, can be found at: http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/gencatalog/index.cfm This paper describes the next step, the cataloging of pieces of the Science Canister, which were surfaces exposed to the solarwind or component materials adjacent to solarwind collectors which may have contributed contamination.

The Genesis mission collected solarwind atoms for 28 months with a variety of collectors. The array wafer collector availability is displayed in the online catalog. The purpose of this report is to update the community on availability of array wafer samples and to preview other collectors which are in the process of being added to the online catalog. A total of fifteen pure materials were selected based on engineering and science requirements. Most of the materials were semiconductor wafers which were mounted on the arrays.

Full Text Available The paper describes the study of wind-wave regime at the Gorky reservoir. A series of field experiments (carried out from May to October in 2012–2015 showed that the values of the drag coefficient CD for a middle-sized reservoir in the range of moderate and strong winds are approximately 50 % lower than its values typical of the ocean conditions. The obtained parameterization of CD was implemented in the wave model WAVEWATCH III to receive the correct wave forecasts for a middle-sized reservoir. Statistical distribution of the wind speeds and directions called for consideration of wind field heterogeneity over the Gorky reservoir. It was incorporated using the wind forcing from atmospheric model WRF to WAVEWATCH III. Homogeneous wind forcing from the experimental data was compared with heterogeneous wind forcing from WRF. The need for further improvement of the quality of wind and wave prediction is discussed.

We experimentally demonstrate for the first time (to our knowledge) a coherent CW lidar system capable of wind speed measurement at a probing distance beyond the coherence regime of the light source. A side-by-side wind measurement was conducted on the field using two lidar systems with identical...... optical designs but different laser linewidths. While one system was operating within the coherence regime, the other was measuring at least 2.4 times the coherence range. The probing distance of both lidars is 85 m and the radial wind speed correlation was measured to be r2=0.965 between the two lidars...

Extreme surface wind events over the Arctic (60-90N, 0-360 E) are studied for the modern climate and for its future possible changes on the base of ERA-Interim reanalysis data and CMIP5 scenario RCP8.5. Horizontal surface wind speed (10 m) probability distribution functions in every grid point of reanalysis and models data over the Arctic were evaluated as well as wind speed for 50, 95, 99, 99.9 percentiles (V0.50, V0.95, V0.99, V0.999). At first, changes of V0.50, V0.95, V0.99, V0.999 were studied on the base of ERA-Interim reanalysis for 1981-2010. Results showed regional inhomogenity of wind speed trend intensity. Also, analysis was made for zonal means and separate sectors of the Arctic. To study climate projection of high wind speed there were taken u,v values from CMIP5 numerical experiments for 1961-1990 (Historical) and 2081-2100 (RCP8.5). RCP8.5 scenario was chosen as having the most pronounced response in the climate system, which gave more statistical significance to the calculated trends. Modeled extreme wind speeds for the total Arctic and zonal means show rather good agreement with reanalysis data (compared for decades 1981-1990, 1991-2000). At the same time regional intermodel variability of wind speed is revealed. Trend of extreme surface wind speed in 21 century and for 2081-2100 over the Arctic are analyzed for each model. The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 14-37-00038).

Full Text Available Within the complex dynamics of the solarwind's fluctuating plasma parameters, there is a detectable, hidden order described by a chaotic strange attractor which has a multifractal structure. The multifractal spectrum has been investigated using Voyager (magnetic field data in the outer heliosphere and using Helios (plasma data in the inner heliosphere. We have also analyzed the spectrum for the solarwind attractor. The spectrum is found to be consistent with that for the multifractal measure of the self-similar one-scale weighted Cantor set with two parameters describing uniform compression and natural invariant probability measure of the attractor of the system. In order to further quantify the multifractality, we also consider a generalized weighted Cantor set with two different scales describing nonuniform compression. We investigate the resulting multifractal spectrum depending on two scaling parameters and one probability measure parameter, especially for asymmetric scaling. We hope that this generalized model will also be a useful tool for analysis of intermittent turbulence in space plasmas.

This dissertation is devoted to expanding our understanding of the solarwind structure in the inner heliosphere and variations therein with solar activity. Using spacecraft observations and numerical models, the origins of the large-scale structures and long-term trends of the solarwind are explored in order to gain insights on how our Sun determines the space environments of the terrestrial planets. I use long term measurements of the solarwind density, velocity, interplanetary magnetic field, and particles, together with models based on solar magnetic field data, to generate time series of these properties that span one solar rotation (˜27 days). From these time series, I assemble and obtain the synoptic overviews of the solarwind properties. The resulting synoptic overviews show that the solarwind around Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars is a complex co-rotating structure with recurring features and occasional transients. During quiet solar conditions, the heliospheric current sheet, which separates the positive interplanetary magnetic field from the negative, usually has a remarkably steady two- or four-sector structure that persists for many solar rotations. Within the sector boundaries are the slow and fast speed solarwind streams that originate from the open coronal magnetic field sources that map to the ecliptic. At the sector boundaries, compressed high-density and the related high-dynamic pressure ridges form where streams from different coronal source regions interact. High fluxes of energetic particles also occur at the boundaries, and are seen most prominently during the quiet solar period. The existence of these recurring features depends on how long-lived are their source regions. In the last decade, 3D numerical solarwind models have become more widely available. They provide important scientific tools for obtaining a more global view of the inner heliosphere and of the relationships between conditions at Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. When

Solarwind density depletions are phenomena that solarwind density is rapidly decreased and keep the state. They are generally believed to be caused by the interplanetary (IP) shocks. However, there are other cases that are hardly associated with IP shocks. We set up a hypothesis for this phenomenon and analyze this study. We have collected the solarwind parameters such as density, speed and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) data related to the solarwind density depletion events during the period from 1996 to 2013 that are obtained with the advanced composition explorer (ACE) and the Wind satellite. We also calculate two pressures (magnetic, dynamic) and analyze the relation with density depletion. As a result, we found total 53 events and the most these phenomena’s sources caused by IP shock are interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME). We also found that solarwind density depletions are scarcely related with IP shock’s parameters. The solarwind density is correlated with solarwind dynamic pressure within density depletion. However, the solarwind density has an little anti-correlation with IMF strength during all events of solarwind density depletion, regardless of the presence of IP shocks. Additionally, In 47 events of IP shocks, we find 6 events that show a feature of blast wave. The quantities of IP shocks are weaker than blast wave from the Sun, they are declined in a short time after increasing rapidly. We thus argue that IMF strength or dynamic pressure are an important factor in understanding the nature of solarwind density depletion. Since IMF strength and solarwind speed varies with solar cycle, we will also investigate the characteristics of solarwind density depletion events in different phases of solar cycle as an additional clue to their physical nature.

This paper identifies the potentials of solar and wind energy. The prime sites for wind are coastal area, arid zone and hill terrains. Solar energy is abundant over most parts of the country, the maximum being received over Quetta valley. (author)

DOE's Solar and Wind Technologies for Hydrogen Production Report to Congress summarizes the technology roadmaps for solar- and wind-based hydrogen production. Published in December 2005, it fulfills the requirement under section 812 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

We consider solarwind flow tubes as a magnetosonic wave-guide. Assuming a symmetric expansion in edges of slab-modelled wave-guide, we study the propagation characteristics of magnetosonic wave in the solarwind flow tubes. We present the preliminary results and discuss their implications.

This research was designed to provide an understanding of physical wind mechanisms within the complex terrain of the Great Valley of Eastern Tennessee to assess the impacts of regional air flow with regard to synoptic and mesoscale weather changes, wind direction shifts, and air quality. Meteorological data from 2008 2009 were analyzed from 13 meteorological sites along with associated upper level data. Up to 15 ancillary sites were used for reference. Two-step complete linkage and K-means cluster analyses, synoptic weather studies, and ambient meteorological comparisons were performed to generate hourly wind classifications. These windregimes revealed seasonal variations of underlying physical wind mechanisms (forced channeled, vertically coupled, pressure-driven, and thermally-driven winds). Synoptic and ambient meteorological analysis (mixing depth, pressure gradient, pressure gradient ratio, atmospheric and surface stability) suggested up to 93% accuracy for the clustered results. Probabilistic prediction schemes of wind flow and wind class change were developed through characterization of flow change data and wind class succession. Data analysis revealed that wind flow in the Great Valley was dominated by forced channeled winds (45 67%) and vertically coupled flow (22 38%). Down-valley pressure-driven and thermally-driven winds also played significant roles (0 17% and 2 20%, respectively), usually accompanied by convergent wind patterns (15 20%) and large wind direction shifts, especially in the Central/Upper Great Valley. The behavior of most windregimes was associated with detectable pressure differences between the Lower and Upper Great Valley. Mixing depth and synoptic pressure gradients were significant contributors to wind pattern behavior. Up to 15 wind classes and 10 sub-classes were identified in the Central Great Valley with 67 joined classes for the Great Valley at-large. Two-thirds of Great Valley at-large flow was defined by 12 classes. Winds

Full Text Available In situ measurements of the solarwind largely cover more than two solar magnetic activity cycles, namely 20 and 21. This is a very appealing opportunity to study the influence of the activity cycle on the behaviour of the solarwind parameters. As a matter of fact, many authors so far have studied this topic comparing the long-term magnetic field and plasma averages. However, when the average values are evaluated on a data sample whose duration is comparable with (or even longer than the solar rotation period we lose information about the contribution due to the fast and the slow solarwind components. Thus, discriminating in velocity plays a key role in understanding solar cycle effects on the solarwind. Based on these considerations, we performed a separate analysis for fast and slow wind, respectively. In particular, we found that: (a fast wind carries a slightly larger momentum flux density at 1 AU, probably due to dynamic stream-stream interaction; (b proton number density in slow wind is more cycle dependent than in fast wind and decreases remarkably across solar maximum; (c fast wind generally carries a magnetic field intensity stronger than that carried by the slow wind; (d we found no evidence for a positive correlation between velocity and field intensity as predicted by some theories of solarwind acceleration; (e our results would support an approximately constant divergence of field lines associated with corotating high-velocity streams.

The magnetic variance anisotropy (A{sub m}) of the solarwind has been used widely as a method to identify the nature of solarwind turbulent fluctuations; however, a thorough discussion of the meaning and interpretation of the A{sub m} has not appeared in the literature. This paper explores the implications and limitations of using the A{sub m} as a method for constraining the solarwind fluctuation mode composition and presents a more informative method for interpreting spacecraft data. The paper also compares predictions of the A{sub m} from linear theory to nonlinear turbulence simulations and solarwind measurements. In both cases, linear theory compares well and suggests that the solarwind for the interval studied is dominantly Alfvenic in the inertial and dissipation ranges to scales of k{rho}{sub i} {approx_equal} 5.

The electric grid is a highly complex, interconnected machine, and changing one part of the grid can have consequences elsewhere. Adding wind and solar affects the operation of the other power plants and adding high penetrations can induce cycling of fossil-fueled generators. Cycling leads to wear-and-tear costs and changes in emissions. Phase 2 of the Western Wind and Solar Integration Study (WWSIS-2) evaluated these costs and emissions and simulated grid operations for a year to investigate the detailed impact of wind and solar on the fossil-fueled fleet. This built on Phase 1, one of the largest wind and solar integration studies ever conducted, which examined operational impacts of high wind and solar penetrations in the West.

The electric grid is a highly complex, interconnected machine, and changing one part of the grid can have consequences elsewhere. Adding wind and solar affects the operation of the other power plants and adding high penetrations can induce cycling of fossil-fueled generators. Cycling leads to wear-and-tear costs and changes in emissions. Phase 2 of the Western Wind and Solar Integration Study (WWSIS-2) evaluated these costs and emissions and simulated grid operations for a year to investigate the detailed impact of wind and solar on the fossil-fueled fleet. This built on Phase 1, one of the largest wind and solar integration studies ever conducted, which examined operational impacts of high wind and solar penetrations in the West(GE Energy 2010).

The SOHO payload includes three experiments designed to make "in situ" particle measurements of the solarwind and solar energetic particles (CELIAS, D. Hovestadt PI; COSTEP, H. Kunow PI; ERNE, J. Torsti PI). The solarwind measurements that are the focus of this talk are primarily provided by the CELIAS CTOF and MTOF sensors. (CELIAS/STOF and COSTEP-ERNE measure solar and interplanetary suprathermal and energetic particle populations.) CELIAS/CTOF measures solarwind heavy ion elemental and charge state abundances, information which is used (for example) in identifying the type of solarwind flow and the ionization processes in the corona where the solarwind charge states become "frozen-in". CELIAS/MTOF provides heavy ion elemental and isotopic abundances that are important (for example) in the study of fractionation factors in coronal abundances (as in the so-called "FIP-effect") for the rarer elements not resolvable in conventional solarwind composition instruments, and in determining the isotopic make-up of the solar corona. MTOF is, by far, the most powerful solarwind mass spectrometer flown to date, and already has new science to report at the time of this writing. This happenstance is due to a combination of (1) advanced technology in obtaining high mass resolution for ions at solarwind energies, and (2) increased statistics. The excellent counting statistics are largely due to continuous solarwind monitoring (with its position at L1, ``the Sun never sets on SOHO''), and the continuous sampling of the solarwind by the 3-axis stabilized spacecraft further enhanced by MTOF's novel, never previously flown deflection system that encompasses a very large dynamic range. As might be expected, this unique opportunity has allowed MTOF to identify a number of elements for the first time in the solarwind (e.g., P, Ti, Cr and Ni). A rich assortment of solarwind isotopes have been identified for the first time, many of which (e.g., Fe 54 and 56; Ni 58,60,62) have

The analysis of Mariner 10 observations of Lyman-alpha resonance radiation shows an increase of interplanetary neutral hydrogen densities above the solar poles. This increase is caused by a latitudinal variation of the solarwind velocity and/or flux. Using both the Mariner 10 results and other solarwind observations, the values of the solarwind flux and velocity with latitude are determined for several cases of interest. The latitudinal variation of interplanetary hydrogen gas, arising from the solarwind latitudinal variation, is shown to be most pronounced in the inner solar system. From this result it is shown that spacecraft Lyman-alpha observations are more sensitive to the latitudinal anisotropy for a spacecraft location in the inner solar system near the downwind axis.

framework results more favourable to overplanting. The results indicate that current conceivable offshore wind power plants in the UK can increase their economic value by around 30 mio AC when optimising their capacity setup. In Denmark, current regulations are not suitable for overplanting causing loss...

Propagation of coronal mass ejections from solar surface to the Earth magnetosphere is strongly influenced by the conditions in solar corona and ambient solarwind. Thus, reliable simulation of the background solarwind is the primary task toward the development of numerical model for the transient events. In this paper we introduce a new numerical model which has been specifically designed for numerical study of the solar corona and ambient solarwind. This model is based on our recently developed three-dimensional Spherical Coordinate Adaptive Magneto-Hydro-Dynamic (MHD) code (SCA-MHD-3D) [Yuan et al., 2009]. Modifications has been done to include the observed magnetic field at the photosphere as inner boundary conditions. The energy source term together with reduced plasma gamma are used in the nonlinear MHD equations in order to simulate the solarwind acceleration from subsonic speed at solar surface to supersonic speed at the inter-heliosphere region, and the absorbing boundary conditions are used at the solar surface. This model has been applied to simulate the background solarwind condition for several different solar rotations, and comparison between the observation and model output have shown that it reproduces many features of solarwind, including open and closed magnetic fields, fast and slow solarwind speed, sector boundaries, etc.

There is growing national interest in renewable energy development based on the economic, environmental, and security benefits that these resources provide. Historically, greater development of our domestic renewable energy resources has faced a number of hurdles, primarily related to cost, regulation, and financing. With the recent sustained increase in the costs and associated volatility of fossil fuels, the economics of renewable energy technologies have become increasingly attractive to investors, both large and small. As a result, new entrants are investing in renewable energy and new business models are emerging. This study surveys some of the current issues related to wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) energy project financing in the electric power industry, and identifies both barriers to and opportunities for increased investment.

Genesis solarwind array collectors were fractured upon landing hard in Utah in 2004. The fragments were retrieved from the damaged canister, imaged, repackaged and shipped to the Johnson Space Center curatorial facility [1]. As of January 2009, the collection consists of 3460 samples. Of these, 442 are comprised into "multiple" sample groupings, either affixed to adhesive paper (177) or collected in jars (17), culture trays (87), or sets of polystyrene vials (161). A focused characterization task was initiated in May 2008 to document the largest samples in the collection. The task consisted of two goals: to document sapphire based fragments greater than 2 cm in one dimension, and to document silicon based fragments greater than 1 cm in one direction.

Recent results have suggested that the statistics of bursts in the solarwind vary with solar cycle. Here, we show that this variation is basically absent if one considers extreme bursts. These are defined as threshold-exceeding events over the range of high thresholds for which their number decays as a power law. In particular, we find that the distribution of duration times and energies of extreme bursts in the solarwind ε parameter and similar observables are independent of the solar cycle and in this sense stationary, and show robust asymptotic power laws with exponents that are independent of the specific threshold. This is consistent with what has been observed for solar flares and, thus, provides evidence in favor of a link between solar flares and extreme bursts in the solarwind.

We examine statistically some properties of 96 20 MeV gradual solar energetic proton (SEP) events as a function of three different types of solarwind (SW) as classified by Richardson and Cane. Gradual SEP (E > 10 MeV) events are produced in shocks driven by fast (V ≳ 900 km s{sup –1}) and wide (W > 60°) coronal mass ejections (CMEs). We find no differences among the transient, fast, and slow SW streams for SEP 20 MeV proton event timescales. It has recently been found that the peak intensities Ip of these SEP events scale with the ∼2 MeV proton background intensities, which may be a proxy for the near-Sun shock seed particles. Both the intensities Ip and their 2 MeV backgrounds are significantly enhanced in transient SW compared to those of fast and slow SW streams, and the values of Ip normalized to the 2 MeV backgrounds only weakly correlate with CME V for all SW types. This result implies that forecasts of SEP events could be improved by monitoring both the Sun and the local SW stream properties and that the well known power-law size distributions of Ip may differ between transient and long-lived SW streams. We interpret an observed correlation between CME V and the 2 MeV background for SEP events in transient SW as a manifestation of enhanced solar activity.

A solar updraft tower is a type of power plant which uses solar irradiation to generate electricity. It consists of three elements: a solar air collector, wind turbines and a chimney. The proposed concepts for this chimney schematise it as a 1-km-tall reinforced concrete shell, which are vulnerable

Along with temperature and density, the elemental abundance is a basic parameter required by astronomers to understand and model any physical system. The abundances of the solar corona are known to differ from those of the solar photosphere via a mechanism related to the first ionization potential of the element, but the normalization of these values with respect to hydrogen is challenging. Here, we show that the values used by solar physicists for over a decade and currently referred to as the 'coronal abundances' do not agree with the data themselves. As a result, recent analysis and interpretation of solar data involving coronal abundances may need to be revised. We use observations from coronal spectroscopy, the solarwind, and solar energetic particles as well as the latest abundances of the solar photosphere to establish a new set of abundances that reflect our current understanding of the coronal plasma.

It has long been known that the energy in velocity and magnetic field fluctuations in the solarwind is not in equipartition. In this paper, we present an analysis of 5 years of Wind data at 1 AU to investigate the reason for this. The residual energy (difference between energy in velocity and magnetic field fluctuations) was calculated using both the standard magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) normalization for the magnetic field and a kinetic version, which includes temperature anisotropies and drifts between particle species. It was found that with the kinetic normalization, the fluctuations are closer to equipartition, with a mean normalized residual energy of sigma_r = -0.19 and mean Alfven ratio of r_A = 0.71. The spectrum of residual energy, in the kinetic normalization, was found to be steeper than both the velocity and magnetic field spectra, consistent with some recent MHD turbulence predictions and numerical simulations, having a spectral index close to -1.9. The local properties of residual energy and cros...

Full Text Available Ensuring energy security, reducing GHG emissions and boosting the competitiveness of a country’s economy by attracting investments and technical knowhow are of paramount importance considering the targets of “20-20-20” set by the European community. Being the cradle of civilization, Greece appears today as a country caught in a prolonged hard economic and social crisis, the way out of which its citizens are looking forward as well as the entire European Union. Establishment of the leading renewable energy sources like solar and wind in Greece will not only increase the independence of its own electrification but will also provide with a foundation for developing the market of international trade of “green” energy. This paper initially highlights the current status of photovoltaics and wind turbines in Greece. Furthermore, this study evaluates whether a higher penetration of the above mentioned green energy sources would have positive impact in the economy of the country or not and in what extent they could decline the CO2 emissions until 2020, comparing to the corresponding levels in 2010.

A long-standing mystery posed by in-situ heliospheric observations is the large angular extent of slow solarwind about the heliospheric current sheet (HCS). Measurements of plasma composition strongly imply that much of the slow wind consists of plasma from the closed corona that escapes onto open field lines, presumably by field-line opening or by interchange reconnection. Both of these processes are expected to release closed-field plasma into the solarwind within and immediately adjacent to the HCS. The recently proposed Separatrix-Web (S-Web) Theory postulates that the observations of slow wind far from the HCS can be explained by the dynamical interaction of open and closed flux in regions of complex coronal-hole topology. We present the first high-resolution, three-dimensional numerical simulations of the dynamic S-Web. These simulations suggest that photospheric motions at coronal-hole boundaries are responsible for the release of slow solarwind plasma from the magnetically closed solar corona, specifically through prolific interchange magnetic reconnection. The location of this plasma once it is released into the solarwind depends strongly on the geometry of the coronal-hole flux. We demonstrate how the dynamics at the boundaries of narrow corridors of open flux (coronal hole corridors) can create giant S-Web arcs of slow solarwind at high latitudes in the heliosphere, far from the HCS, accounting for the long-puzzling slow-wind observations.

Knowledge about the background solarwind plays a crucial role in the framework of space weather forecasting. In-situ measurements of the background solarwind are only available for a few points in the heliosphere where spacecraft are located, therefore we have to rely on heliospheric models to derive the distribution of solarwind parameters in interplanetary space. We test the performance of different solarwind models, namely Magnetohydrodynamic Algorithm outside a Sphere/ENLIL (MAS/ENLIL), Wang-Sheeley-Arge/ENLIL (WSA/ENLIL), and MAS/MAS, by comparing model results with in-situ measurements from spacecraft located at 1 AU distance to the Sun (ACE, Wind). To exclude the influence of interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs), we chose the year 2007 as a time period with low solar activity for our comparison. We found that the general structure of the background solarwind is well reproduced by all models. The best model results were obtained for the parameter solarwind speed. However, the predicted ar...

We calculate charge state distributions of Kr and Xe in a model for two different types of solarwind using the effective ionization and recombination rates provided from the OPEN_ADAS data base. The charge states of heavy elements in the solarwind are essential for estimating the efficiency of Coulomb drag in the inner corona. We find that xenon ions experience particularly low Coulomb drag from protons in the inner corona, comparable to the notoriously weak drag of protons on helium ions. It has been found long ago that helium in the solarwind can be strongly depleted near interplanetary current sheets, whereas coronal mass ejecta are sometimes strongly enriched in helium. We argue that if the extraordinary variability of the helium abundance in the solarwind is due to inefficient Coulomb drag, the xenon abundance must vary strongly. In fact, a secular decrease of the solarwind xenon abundance relative to the other heavier noble gases (Ne, Ar, Kr) has been postulated based on a comparison of noble gases in recently irradiated and ancient samples of ilmenite in the lunar regolith. We conclude that decreasing solar activity and decreasing frequency of coronal mass ejections over the solar lifetime might be responsible for a secularly decreasing abundance of xenon in the solarwind.

Venus has no significant internal magnetic field, which allows the solarwind to interact directly with its atmosphere. A field is induced in this interaction, which partially shields the atmosphere, but we have no knowledge of how effective that shield is at solar minimum. (Our current knowledge of the solarwind interaction with Venus is derived from measurements at solar maximum.) The bow shock is close to the planet, meaning that it is possible that some solarwind could be absorbed by the atmosphere and contribute to the evolution of the atmosphere. Here we report magnetic field measurements from the Venus Express spacecraft in the plasma environment surrounding Venus. The bow shock under low solar activity conditions seems to be in the position that would be expected from a complete deflection by a magnetized ionosphere. Therefore little solarwind enters the Venus ionosphere even at solar minimum.

Full Text Available In this paper we study the temperatures of electrons convected with the solarwind to large solar distances and finally transported over the solarwind termination shock. Nearly nothing, unless at high energies in the cosmic ray regime, is known about the thermodynamical behaviour of these distant electrons from in~situ plasma observations. Hence it is tacitly assumed these electrons, due to their adiabatic behaviour and vanishing heat conduction or energization processes, have rapidly cooled off to very low temperatures once they eventually arrive at the solarwind termination shock (at about 100 AU. In this paper we show that such electrons, however, at their passage over the termination shock due to the shock–electric field action undergo an over-adiabatic heating and therefore appear on the downstream side as a substantially heated plasma species. Looking quantitatively into this heating process we find that solarwind electrons achieve temperatures of the order of 2–4 × 106 K downstream of the termination shock, depending on the upstream solarwind bulk velocity and the shock compression ratio. Hence these electrons therewith play an important dynamical role in structuring this shock and determining the downstream plasma flow properties. Furthermore, they present an additional ionization source for incoming neutral interstellar hydrogen and excite X-ray emission. They also behave similar to cosmic ray electrons and extend to some limited region upstream of the shock of the order of 0.1 AU by spatial diffusion and thereby also modify the upstream solarwind properties.

of production, hence revenue for the wind farm operator. On the other hand, progresses in short term forecasting, together with the increasing use of probabilistic forecasting can help in achieving efficient power fluctuations reduction with minimum lost production. Here we present supervisory control concepts...... that consider different wind power regimes to derive control setpoints by using a Markov-Switching AutoRegressive model. We evaluate the performance versus measured data in terms of power ramp characteristics and energy efficiency....

A fractal model of the solarwind is presented. This model treats fluctuations of the solarwind velocity from the viewpoint of nonlinear processes originating in the convective region and photosphere of the Sun. The multifractal structure of proton velocity fluctuations in a region of heliocentric distances from 0.2 to 0.8 AU is a result of these processes. Continuous measurements of solarwind velocity aboard the ISEE-3 spacecraft during one month were used to compare the theoretical and experimental results. It is shown that fluctuations of proton velocity have a multifractal structure in a frequency range of 10-5 - 10-3Hz.

A survey has been completed to examine the problems and complications arising from wind loading on solar concentrators. Wind loading is site specific and has an important bearing on the design, cost, performance, operation and maintenance, safety, survival, and replacement of solar collecting systems. Emphasis herein is on paraboloidal, two-axis tracking systems. Thermal receiver problems also are discussed. Wind characteristics are discussed from a general point of view; current methods for determining design wind speed are reviewed. Aerodynamic coefficients are defined and illustrative examples are presented. Wind tunnel testing is discussed, and environmental wind tunnels are reviewed; recent results on heliostat arrays are reviewed as well. Aeroelasticity in relation to structural design is discussed briefly. Wind loads, i.e., forces and moments, are proportional to the square of the mean wind velocity. Forces are proportional to the square of concentrator diameter, and moments are proportional to the cube of diameter. Thus, wind loads have an important bearing on size selection from both cost and performance standpoints. It is concluded that sufficient information exists so that reasonably accurate predictions of wind loading are possible for a given paraboloidal concentrator configuration, provided that reliable and relevant wind conditions are specified. Such predictions will be useful to the design engineer and to the systems engineer as well. Information is lacking, however, on wind effects in field arrays of paraboloidal concentrators. Wind tunnel tests have been performed on model heliostat arrays, but there are important aerodynamic differences between heliostats and paraboloidal dishes.

3-D PIC (Particle In Cell) simulations of spacecraft-plasma interactions in the solarwind context of the Solar Probe Plus mission are presented. The SPIS software is used to simulate a simplified probe in the near-Sun environment (at a distance of 0.044AU or 9.5 R{sub S} from the Sun surface).We begin this study with a cross comparison of SPIS with another PIC code, aiming at providing the static potential structure surrounding a spacecraft in a high photoelectron environment. This paper presents then a sensitivity study using generic SPIS capabilities, investigating the role of some physical phenomena and numerical models. It confirms that in the near- sun environment, the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft would rather be negatively charged, despite the high yield of photoemission. This negative potential is explained through the dense sheath of photoelectrons and secondary electrons both emitted with low energies (2-3 eV). Due to this low energy of emission, these particles are not ejected at an infinite distance of the spacecraft and would rather surround it. As involved densities of photoelectrons can reach 10{sup 6} cm{sup -3} (compared to ambient ions and electrons densities of about 7 x 10{sup 3} cm{sup -3}), those populations affect the surrounding plasma potential generating potential barriers for low energy electrons, leading to high recollection. This charging could interfere with the low energy (up to a few tens of eV) plasma sensors and particle detectors, by biasing the particle distribution functions measured by the instruments. Moreover, if the spacecraft charges to large negative potentials, the problem will be more severe as low energy electrons will not be seen at all. The importance of the modelling requirements in terms of precise prediction of spacecraft potential is also discussed. (orig.)

The possible erosion of a carbon/carbon thermal shield by solarwind-charged particle radiation is reviewed. The present knowledge of erosion data for carbon and/or graphite is surveyed, and an explanation of erosion mechanisms under different charged particle environments is discussed. The highest erosion is expected at four solar radii. Erosion rates are analytically estimated under several conservative assumptions for a normal quiet and worst case solarwind storm conditions. Mass loss analyses and comparison studies surprisingly indicate that the predicted erosion rate by solarwind could be greater than by nominal free sublimation during solarwind storm conditions at four solar radii. The predicted overall mass loss of a carbon/carbon shield material during the critical four solar radii flyby can still meet the mass loss mission requirement of less than 0.0025 g/sec.

Nine years of solarwind dynamic pressure and geosynchronous magnetic field data are used for a large-scale statistical comparison of uncertainties associated with several different algorithms for propagating solarwind measurements. The MVAB-0 scheme is best overall, performing on average a minute more accurately than a flat time-shift. We also evaluate the accuracy of these time-shifting methods as a function of solarwind magnetic field orientation. We find that all time-shifting algorithms perform significantly worse (>5 min) due to geometric effects when the solarwind magnetic field is radial (parallel or antiparallel to the Earth-Sun line). Finally, we present an empirical scheme that performs almost as well as MVAB-0 on average and slightly better than MVAB-0 for intervals with nonradial B.

We have done a time series analysis of daily average data of solarwind velocity, density and temperature at 1 AU measured by ACE spacecraft for a period of nine years. We have used the raw data without filtering to give a faithful representation of the nonlinear behaviour of the solarwind flow which is a novel one. The sensitivity of the results on filtering is highlighted. The attractor dimension is estimated for every parameter of the solarwind and it is found that they differ substantially. Hence a chaotic picture for the problem from different angles have been obtained. The calculated Kolmogorov entropies and Lyapunov exponents are positive showing evidences that the complex solarwind near the Earth is most likely a deterministic chaotic system.

Some differences between theoretical, numerical and observational determinations of spectral slopes of solarwind turbulence are interpreted in the thermodynamical sense. Confirmations of turbulent Kolmogorov slopes in solarwind magnetic turbulence and magnetohydrodynamic simulations exhibit tiny differences. These are used to infer about entropy generation in the turbulent cascade and to infer about the anomalous turbulent collision frequency in the dissipative range as well as the average energy input in solarwind turbulence. Anomalous turbulent collision frequencies are obtained of the order of v < 200 Hz. The corresponding stationary solarwind magnetic energy input into magnetic turbulence in the Kolmogorov inertial range is obtained to be of the order of 50 eV/s. Its thermal fate is discussed.

Nine years of solarwind dynamic pressure and geosynchronous magnetic field data are used for a large-scale statistical comparison of uncertainties associated with several different algorithms for propagating solarwind measurements. The MVAB-0 scheme used in Weimer et al. [2003] is best overall, performing on average a minute more accurately than a flat timeshift. We also evaluate the accuracy of these timeshifting methods as a function of solarwind magnetic field orientation. We find that all timeshifting algorithms perform significantly worse (> 5 minutes) when the solarwind magnetic field is radial (parallel or anti-parallel to the Earth-Sun line). Finally, we present an empirical scheme that performs almost as well as MVAB-0 on average, and slightly better than MVAB-0 for intervals with non-radial B.

If Pluto's atmospheric escape rate is significantly greater than 1.5 x 10{sup 27} molecules s{sup {minus}1} then the interaction with the tenuous solarwind at 30 A.U. will be like that of a comet: there will be extensive ion pick-up upstream and the size of the interaction region will vary directly with variations in the solarwind flux. If the escape flux is much less, then one expects that the solarwind will be deflected around Pluto's ionosphere in a Venus-like interaction. In either case, the weak interplanetary magnetic field at 30 A.U. results in very large gyroradii for the picked up ions and a thick bow shock, necessitating a kinetic treatment of the interaction. Strong variations in the size of the interaction region are expected on time scales of days due to changes in the solarwind.

Time profiles and histograms of plasma data from Pioneers 10 and 11 are examined for the period between 1975 and 1983. During this time, Pioneer 10 traveled between a heliocentric distance of 8.7 and 30.4 AU. The velocity structure of the solarwind at these heliocentric distances is found to have one of two distinct forms: approximately 70 percent of the time the solarwind has a nearly flat velocity profile. Occasionally, this flat velocity profile is accompanied by quasi-periodic variations in density and in thermal speed consistent with the concept that the 'corotating interaction regions' which are produced by the interaction of high- and low-speed streams at intermediate heliocentric distances are replaced by 'pressure regions' in the outer heliosphere. The remaining 30 percent of the time the solarwind is marked by large (50-200 km/s) long-term (30-120 days) shifts in the average solarwind velocity.

The data obtained by the modern high sensitive EUV-XUV telescopes and photometers such as CORONAS-Photon/TESIS and SPHINX, STEREO/EUVI, PROBA2/SWAP, SDO/AIA provide good possibilities for studying small-scale solar activity (SSA), which is supposed to play an important role in heating of the corona and producing transient flows of the solarwind. During the recent unusually weak solar minimum, a large number of SSA events, such as week solar flares, small CMEs and CME-like flows were observed and recorded in the databases of flares (STEREO, SWAP, SPHINX) and CMEs (LASCO, CACTUS). On the other hand, the solarwind data obtained in this period by ACE, Wind, STEREO contain signatures of transient ICME-like structures which have shorter duration (<10h), weaker magnetic field strength (<10 nT) and lower proton temperature than usual ICMEs. To verify the assumption that ICME-like transients may be associated with the SSA events we investigated the number of weak flares of C-class and lower detected by SPHINX in 2009 and STEREO/EUVI in 2010. The flares were classified on temperature and emission measure using the diagnostic means of SPHINX and Hinode/EIS and were confronted with the parameters of the solarwind (velocity, density, ion composition and temperature, magnetic field, pitch angle distribution of the suprathermal electrons). The outflows of plasma associated with the flares were identified by their coronal signatures - CMEs (only in few cases) and dimmings. It was found that the mean parameters of the solarwind projected to the source surface for the times of the studied flares were typical for the ICME-like transients. The results support the suggestion that weak flares can be indicators of sources of transient plasma flows contributing to the slow solarwind at solar minimum, although these flows may be too weak to be considered as separate CMEs and ICMEs. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme

We have investigated the effect of key solarwind driving parameters on solarwind-magnetosphere coupling efficiency during sheath and magnetic cloud-driven storms. The particular focus of the study was on the coupling efficiency dependence with Alfvén Mach number (MA). The efficiency has been estimated using the dawn-dusk component of the interplanetary electric field (EY), Newell and Borovsky functions as a proxy for the energy inflow and the polar cap potential (PCN), and auroral electrojet (AE) and SYM-H indices as the measure of the energy output. We have also performed a time delay analysis between the input parameters and the geomagnetic indices. The optimal time lag and smoothing window length depend on the coupling function used and on the solarwind driver. For example, turbulent sheaths are more sensitive to the time shift and the averaging interval than smoother magnetic clouds. The results presented in this study show that the solarwind-magnetosphere coupling efficiency depends strongly on the definition used, and it increases with increasing MA. We demonstrate that the PCN index distinctively shows both a Mach number dependent saturation and a Mach number independent saturation, pointing to the existence of at least two underlying physical mechanisms for the saturation of the index. By contrast, we show that the AE index saturates but that the saturation of this index is independent of the solarwind Mach number. Finally, we find that the SYM-H index does not seem to saturate and that the absence of saturation is independent of the Mach number regime. We highlight the difference between the typical MA conditions during sheath regions and magnetic clouds. The lowest MA values are related to the magnetic clouds. As a consequence, sheaths typically have higher solarwind-magnetosphere coupling efficiencies than magnetic clouds.

Under the grant that ended November 11, 1988 work was accomplished in a number of areas, as follows: (1) Analysis of solarwind data; (2) Analysis of Giacobini/Zinner encounter data; (3) Investigation of solarwind and magnetospheric electron velocity distributions; and (4) Experimental investigation of the electronic structure of clusters. Reprints and preprints of publications resulting from this work are included in the appendices.

In order to solve problems created by traditional energy, reducing the amount of usage of traditional energy and enlarging the range of usage of new energy, particularly some renewable energy should be developed immediately. In the recent years, China has been paying more attention to the utilization of renewable energy resources. Wind energy and solar energy are particularly popular due to lower cost and high economic effectiveness. As the development of wind energy and solar energy, scienti...

For the first time, the dispersion relation for turbulence magnetic field fluctuations in the solarwind is determined directly on small scales of the order of the electron inertial length, using four-point magnetometer observations from the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. The data are analyzed using the high-resolution adaptive wave telescope technique. Small-scale solarwind turbulence is primarily composed of highly obliquely propagating waves, with dispersion consistent with that of the whistler mode.

To study the variations in the solarwind velocity during inferior conjunctions of Mercury and Earth, we analyzed 54 events in the period 1995 to 2012 by the superimposed epoch method. We have found a noticeable increase in the velocity both before and after the conjunctions as well as decrease in the velocity within 3-4 days after them, which seems to be associated with Mercury's "shadow". The results obtained might be used to improve a forecast of the solarwind velocity.

Particle velocity distributions measured in the weakly collisional solarwind are frequently found to be non-Maxwellian, but how these non-Maxwellian distributions impact the physics of plasma turbulence in the solarwind remains unanswered. Using numerical solutions of the linear dispersion relation for a collisionless plasma with a bi-Maxwellian proton velocity distribution, we present a unified framework for the four proton temperature anisotropy instabilities, identifying the associated s...

We discuss the key characteristics of the proton-rich solarwind and describe how it may interact with the lunar surface. We suggest that solarwind can be both a source and loss of water/OH related volatiles, and review models showing both possibilities. Energy from the Sun in the form of radiation and solarwind plasma are in constant interaction with the lunar surface. As such, there is a solar-lunar energy connection, where solar energy and matter are continually bombarding the lunar surface, acting at the largest scale to erode the surface at 0.2 Angstroms per year via ion sputtering [1]. Figure 1 illustrates this dynamically Sun-Moon system.

With support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) produced maps and data of the wind and solar resources in Bhutan. The solar resource data show that Bhutan has an adequate resource for flat-plate collectors, with annual average values of global horizontal solar radiation ranging from 4.0 to 5.5 kWh/m2-day (4.0 to 5.5 peak sun hours per day). The information provided in this report may be of use to energy planners in Bhutan involved in developing energy policy or planning wind and solar projects, and to energy analysts around the world interested in gaining an understanding of Bhutan's wind and solar energy potential.

A survey was completed to examine the problems and complications arising from wind loading on solar concentrators. Wind loading is site specific and has an important bearing on the design, cost, performance, operation and maintenance, safety, survival, and replacement of solar collecting systems. Emphasis herein is on paraboloidal, two-axis tracking systems. Thermal receiver problems also are discussed. Wind characteristics are discussed from a general point of view. Current methods for determining design wind speed are reviewed. Aerodynamic coefficients are defined and illustrative examples are presented. Wind tunnel testing is discussed, and environmental wind tunnels are reviewed. Recent results on heliostat arrays are reviewed as well. Aeroelasticity in relation to structural design is discussed briefly.

The origin and acceleration of the solarwind are still debated. In this paper, we search for signatures of the source region and acceleration mechanism of the solarwind in the plasma properties measured in situ by the Advanced Composition Explorer spacecraft. Using the elemental abundances as a proxy for the source region and the differential velocity and ion temperature ratios as a proxy for the acceleration mechanism, we are able to identify signatures pointing toward possible source regions and acceleration mechanisms. We find that the fast solarwind in the ecliptic plane is the same as that observed from the polar regions and is consistent with wave acceleration and coronal-hole origin. We also find that the slow wind is composed of two components: one similar to the fast solarwind (with slower velocity) and the other likely originating from closed magnetic loops. Both components of the slow solarwind show signatures of wave acceleration. From these findings, we draw a scenario that envisions two types of wind, with different source regions and release mechanisms, but the same wave acceleration mechanism.

This study comprise analysis and discussion of incentives inherent in the Swedish and Danish subsidy regimes for household owned wind power. New results include an evaluation of the subsidy value of income and VAT tax breaks available to investors, and a demonstration of the importance of the choice of ownership arrangements for the profitability of wind power projects. The study outlines the complex restrictions associated with different forms of wind power ownership. These cause the investment market to be highly segmented. The discussion includes several irrational system effects of the subsidy regimes. Among these are collision with energy saving goals, excessive capital costs, dubious siting decisions, and distorted competition among technologies. In conclusion, come policy recommendations are suggested. (author)

It has long been recognized that solarwind bombardment onto exposed surfaces in the solar system will produce an energetic component to the exospheres about those bodies. Laboratory experiments have shown that there is no increase in the sputtering yield caused by highly charged heavy ions for metallic and for semiconducting surfaces, but the sputter yield can be noticeably increased in the case of a good insulating surface. Recently measurements of the solarwind composition have become available. It is now known that the solarwind composition is highly dependent on the origin of the particular plasma. Using the measured composition of the slow wind, fast wind, solar energetic particle (SEP) population, and coronal mass ejection (CME), broken down into its various components, we have estimated the total sputter yield for each type of solarwind. Whereas many previous calculations of sputtering were limited to the effects of proton bombardment. we show that the heavy ion component. especially the He++ component. can greatly enhance the total sputter yield during times when the heavy ion population is enhanced. We will discuss sputtering of both neutrals and ions.

The origin of the slow solarwind has long been one of the most important problems in solar/heliospheric physics. Two observational constraints make this problem especially challenging. First, the slow wind has the composition of the closed-field corona, unlike the fast wind that originates on open field lines. Second, the slow wind has substantial angular extent, of order 30 degrees, which is much larger than the widths observed for streamer stalks or the widths expected theoretically for a dynamic heliospheric current sheet. We propose that the slow wind originates from an intricate network of narrow (possibly singular) open-field corridors that emanate from the polar coronal hole regions. Using topological arguments, we show that these corridors must be ubiquitous in the solar corona. The total solar eclipse in August 2008, near the lowest point of the Deep Minimum, affords an ideal opportunity to test this theory by using the ultra-high resolution Predictive Science's (PSI) eclipse model for the corona and wind. Analysis of the PSI eclipse model demonstrates that the extent and scales of the open-field corridors can account for both the angular width of the slow wind and its closed-field composition. We discuss the implications of our slow wind theory for the structure of the corona and heliosphere at the Deep Minimum and describe further observational and theoretical tests. This work has been supported by the NASA HTP, SR&T, and LWS programs.

Solar dimming and wind stilling (slowdown) are two outstanding climate changes occurred in China over the last four decades. The wind stilling may have suppressed the dispersion of aerosols and amplified the impact of aerosol emission on solar dimming. However, there is a lack of long-term aerosol monitoring and associated study in China to confirm this hypothesis. Here, long-term meteorological data at weather stations combined with short-term aerosol data were used to assess this hypothesis. It was found that surface solar radiation (SSR) decreased considerably with wind stilling in heavily polluted regions at a daily scale, indicating that wind stilling can considerably amplify the aerosol extinction effect on SSR. A threshold value of 3.5 m/s for wind speed is required to effectively reduce aerosols concentration. From this SSR dependence on wind speed, we further derived proxies to quantify aerosol emission and wind stilling amplification effects on SSR variations at a decadal scale. The results show that aerosol emission accounted for approximately 20% of the typical solar dimming in China, which was amplified by approximately 20% by wind stilling.

While the source of the fast solarwind is well understood to be linked to coronal holes, the source of the slow solarwind has remained elusive. Many previous studies of the slow solarwind have examined trends in the composition and charge states over long time scales and found strong relationships between the solarwind velocity and these plasma parameters. These relationships have been used to constrain models of solarwind source and acceleration. In this study, we take advantage of high time resolution (12 min) measurements of solarwind composition and charge-state abundances recently reprocessed by the ACE SolarWind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICS) science team to probe the timescales of solarwind variability at relatively small scales. We study an interval of slow solarwind containing quasi-periodic 90 minute structures and show that they are remnants of solar magnetic reconnection. Each 90-minute parcel of slow solarwind, though the speed remains steady, exhibits the complete range of charge state and composition variations expected for the entire range of slow solarwind, which is repeated again in the next 90-minute interval. These observations show that previous statistical results break down on these shorter timescales, and impose new and important constraints on models of slow solarwind creation. We conclude by suggesting these structures were created through interchange magnetic reconnection and form elemental building blocks of the slow solarwind. We also discuss the necessity of decoupling separately the process(es) responsible for the release and acceleration.

The comparatively well-ordered magnetic structure in the solar corona during the decline of Solar Cycle 20 revealed a characteristic dependence of solar energetic particle injection upon heliographic longitude. When analyzed using solarwind mapping of the large scale interplanetary magnetic field line connection from the corona to the Earth, particle fluxes display an approximately exponential dependence on heliographic longitude. Since variations in the solarwind velocity (and hence the coronal connection longitude) can severely distort the simple coronal injection profile, the use of real-time solarwind velocity measurements can be of great aid in predicting the decay of solar particle events. Although such exponential injection profiles are commonplace during 1973-1975, they have also been identified earlier in Solar Cycle 20, and hence this structure may be present during the rise and maximum of the cycle, but somewhat obscured by greater temporal variations in particle injection.

High-energy superhalo electrons are present in the interplanetary medium even in absence of any solar activity, carrying important information on the electron acceleration in the solarwind. We present a statistical survey of ~20-300 keV superhalo electrons measured at 1 AU by the WIND 3DP instrument during quiet-time periods from 1995 January through 2013 December. The velocity distribution function of the observed quiet-time superhalo electrons generally fits to a power-law spectrum, f ~ v-γ, with γ ranging from ~4 to ~10. The integrated density of these superhalo electrons at 20-300 keV, nsup, ranges from 10-9 cm-3 to 10-5 cm-3. Both log(nsup) and γ show a good correlation with the sunspot number, with larger density and softer spectrum (γ~ 6-8) at solar maximum, and smaller density and harder spectrum (γ~ 4-5) at solar minimum. The observed power-law spectrum also has no clear association with flares, CMEs, active regions and solarwind core populations, while it shows a weak (~0.3) correlation with in situ solarwind turbulence spectrum. These results suggest that the seed particles of quiet-time superhalo electrons could originate from the Sun, and their acceleration could mainly occur in the interplanetary medium, probably by the electron interaction with solarwind turbulence, or by acceleration at the CIRs.

Full Text Available We examine Ulysses solarwind and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF observations at 5 AU for two ~13 month intervals during the rising and declining phases of solar cycle 23 and the predicted response of the Jovian magnetosphere during these times. The declining phase solarwind, composed primarily of corotating interaction regions and high-speed streams, was, on average, faster, hotter, less dense, and more Alfvénic relative to the rising phase solarwind, composed mainly of slow wind and interplanetary coronal mass ejections. Interestingly, none of solarwind and IMF distributions reported here were bimodal, a feature used to explain the bimodal distribution of bow shock and magnetopause standoff distances observed at Jupiter. Instead, many of these distributions had extended, non-Gaussian tails that resulted in large standard deviations and much larger mean over median values. The distribution of predicted Jupiter bow shock and magnetopause standoff distances during these intervals were also not bimodal, the mean/median values being larger during the declining phase by ~1 – 4%. These results provide data-derived solarwind and IMF boundary conditions at 5 AU for models aimed at studying solarwind-magnetosphere interactions at Jupiter and can support the science investigations of upcoming Jupiter system missions. Here, we provide expectations for Juno, which is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter in July 2016. Accounting for the long-term decline in solarwind dynamic pressure reported by McComas et al. (2013, Jupiter’s bow shock and magnetopause is expected to be at least 8 – 12% further from Jupiter, if these trends continue.

The majority of electricity and heat in Colorado comes from coal and natural gas; however, renewable energy sources will play an integral role in the state's energy future. Colorado is the 11th windiest state and has more than 250 sunny days per year. The objectives of this research are to: 1) determine which landcover classes are affiliated with high wind and solar potential; and 2) identify areas that are suitable for wind and solar farms using multicriteria GIS modelling techniques. Renewable potential (NREL wind speed measurements at 50 m above the ground and NREL annual insolation data), landcover, population density, federal lands, and distance to roads, transmission lines, and cities were reclassified according to their suitability. Each was assigned weights based on their relative importance to one another. Superb wind classes are located in high alpine areas. Unfortunately, these areas are not suitable for large-scale wind farm development due to their inaccessibility and location within a sensitive ecosystem. Federal lands have low wind potential. According to the GIS model, ideal areas for wind farm development are located in northeastern Colorado. About 41 850 km{sup 2} of the state has model scores that are in the 90-100% range. Although annual solar radiation varies slightly, inter-mountain areas receive the most insolation. As far as federal lands, Indian reservations have the greatest solar input. The GIS model indicates that ideal areas for solar development are located in northwestern Colorado and east of Denver. Only 191 km{sup 2} of the state had model scores that were in the 90-100% range. These results suggest that the variables used in this analysis have more of an effect at eliminating non-suitable areas for large-scale solar farms; a greater area exists for suitable wind farms. However, given the statewide high insolation values with minimal variance, solar projects may be better suited for small-scale residential or commercial

Full Text Available STEREO has now completed the first two years of its mission, moving from close proximity to Earth in 2006/2007 to more than 50 degrees longitudinal separation from Earth in 2009. During this time, several large-scale structures have been observed in situ. Given the prevailing solar minimum conditions, these structures have been predominantly coronal hole-associated solarwind, slow solarwind, their interfaces, and the occasional transient event. In this paper, we extend earlier solarwind composition studies into the current solar minimum using high-resolution (1-h sampling times for the charge state analysis. We examine 2-year trends for iron charge states and solarwind proton speeds, and present a case study of Carrington Rotation 2064 (December 2007 which includes minor ion (He, Fe, O kinetic and Fe composition parameters in comparison with proton and magnetic field signatures at large-scale structures observed during this interval.

The most recent "grand minimum" of solar activity, the Maunder minimum (MM, 1650-1710), is of great interest both for understanding the solar dynamo and providing insight into possible future heliospheric conditions. Here, we use nearly 30 years of output from a data-constrained magnetohydrodynamic model of the solar corona to calibrate heliospheric reconstructions based solely on sunspot observations. Using these empirical relations, we produce the first quantitative estimate of global solarwind variations over the last 400 years. Relative to the modern era, the MM shows a factor 2 reduction in near-Earth heliospheric magnetic field strength and solarwind speed, and up to a factor 4 increase in solarwind Mach number. Thus solarwind energy input into the Earth's magnetosphere was reduced, resulting in a more Jupiter-like system, in agreement with the dearth of auroral reports from the time. The global heliosphere was both smaller and more symmetric under MM conditions, which has implications for the interpretation of cosmogenic radionuclide data and resulting total solar irradiance estimates during grand minima.

The most recent “grand minimum” of solar activity, the Maunder minimum (MM, 1650–1710), is of great interest both for understanding the solar dynamo and providing insight into possible future heliospheric conditions. Here, we use nearly 30 years of output from a data-constrained magnetohydrodynamic model of the solar corona to calibrate heliospheric reconstructions based solely on sunspot observations. Using these empirical relations, we produce the first quantitative estimate of global solarwind variations over the last 400 years. Relative to the modern era, the MM shows a factor 2 reduction in near-Earth heliospheric magnetic field strength and solarwind speed, and up to a factor 4 increase in solarwind Mach number. Thus solarwind energy input into the Earth’s magnetosphere was reduced, resulting in a more Jupiter-like system, in agreement with the dearth of auroral reports from the time. The global heliosphere was both smaller and more symmetric under MM conditions, which has implications for the interpretation of cosmogenic radionuclide data and resulting total solar irradiance estimates during grand minima.

Full Text Available The solar maximum solarwind is highly structured in latitude, longitude and in time. Coronal measurements show a very high degree of variability, with large variations that are less apparent within in situ spacecraft measurements. Interplanetary scintillation (IPS observations from EISCAT, covering distances from 20 to 100 solar radii (RS, are an ideal source of information on the inner solarwind and can be used, therefore, to cast light on its evolution with distance from the Sun. Earlier comparisons of in situ and IPS measurements under solar minimum conditions showed good large-scale agreement, particularly in the fast wind. In this study we attempt a quantitative comparison of measurements made over solar maximum by EISCAT (20–100 RS and the Wind and Ulysses spacecraft (at 215 RS and 300–1000 RS, respectively. The intervals studied were August–September 1999, May 2000, September 2000 and May 2001, the last-named being the period of the second Ulysses fast latitude scan. Both ballistic and – when possible – MHD/ballistic hybrid models were used to relate the data sets, and we compare the results obtained from these two mapping methods. The results of this study suggest that solarwind velocities measured in situ were less variable than those estimated from IPS measurements closer to the Sun, with the greatest divergence between IPS velocities and in situ measurements occurring in regions where steep longitudinal velocity gradients were seen in situ. We suggest that the interaction between streams of solarwind with different velocities leads to "smoothing" of solarwind velocities between 30–60 RS and 1 AU, and that this process continues at greater distances from the Sun.

Temporal variations of prevailing winds at 90 to 100 km obtained from measurements carried out in winter 1983 to 1984 at three sites in the USSR and two sites in East Germany are reported. These variations are compared with those of the thermal stratospheric regime. Measurements were carried out using the drifts D2 method (meteor wind radar) and the D1 method (ionospheric drifts). Temporal variations of zonal and meridional prevailing wind components for all the sites are given. Also presented are zonal wind data obtained using the partial reflection wind radar. Wind velocity values were obtained by averaging data recorded at between 105 and 91 km altitude. Wind velocity data averaged in such a way can be related to about the same height interval to which the data obtained by the meteor radar and ionospheric methods at other sites, i.e., the mean height of the meteor zone (about 95 km). The results presented show that there are significant fluctuations about the seasonal course of both zonal and meridional prevailing winds.

Full Text Available One possibility for propellantless propulsion in space is to use the momentum flux of the solarwind. A way to set up a solarwind sail is to have a set of thin long wires which are kept at high positive potential by an onboard electron gun so that the wires repel and deflect incident solarwind protons. The efficiency of this so-called electric sail depends on how large force a given solarwind exerts on a wire segment and how large electron current the wire segment draws from the solarwind plasma when kept at a given potential. We use 1-D and 2-D electrostatic plasma simulations to calculate the force and present a semitheoretical formula which captures the simulation results. We find that under average solarwind conditions at 1 AU the force per unit length is (5±1×10−8 N/m for 15 kV potential and that the electron current is accurately given by the well-known orbital motion limited (OML theory cylindrical Langmuir probe formula. Although the force may appear small, an analysis shows that because of the very low weight of a thin wire per unit length, quite high final speeds (over 50 km/s could be achieved by an electric sailing spacecraft using today's flight-proved components. It is possible that artificial electron heating of the plasma in the interaction region could increase the propulsive effect even further.

Interplanetary magnetic field and solarwind plasma density observed at 1 AU during Solar Cycle 23 - 24 (SC-23/24) minimum were significantly smaller than those during its previous solar cycle (SC-22/23) minimum. Because the Earth's orbit is embedded in the slow wind during solar minimum, changes in the geometry and/or content of the slow wind region (SWR) can have a direct influence on the solarwind parameters near the Earth. In this study, we analyze solarwind plasma and magnetic field data of hourly values acquired by Ulysses. It is found that the solarwind, when averaging over the first (1995.6 - 1995.8) and third (2006.9 - 2008.2) Ulysses' perihelion ({˜} 1.4 AU) crossings, was about the same speed, but significantly less dense ({˜} 34 %) and cooler ({˜} 20 %), and the total magnetic field was {˜} 30 % weaker during the third compared to the first crossing. It is also found that the SWR was {˜} 50 % wider in the third ({˜} 68.5^deg; in heliographic latitude) than in the first ({˜} 44.8°) solar orbit. The observed latitudinal increase in the SWR is sufficient to explain the excessive decline in the near-Earth solarwind density during the recent solar minimum without speculating that the total solar output may have been decreasing. The observed SWR inflation is also consistent with a cooler solarwind in the SC-23/24 than in the SC-22/23 minimum. Furthermore, the ratio of the high-to-low latitude photospheric magnetic field (or equatorward magnetic pressure force), as observed by the Mountain Wilson Observatory, is smaller during the third than the first Ulysses' perihelion orbit. These findings suggest that the smaller equatorward magnetic pressure at the Sun may have led to the latitudinally-wider SRW observed by Ulysses in SC-23/24 minimum.

The spectral profiles of the coronal Ne viii line at 77 nm have different shapes in quiet-Sun regions and coronal holes (CHs). A single Gaussian fit of the line profile provides an adequate approximation in quiet-Sun areas, whereas a strong shoulder on the long-wavelength side is a systematic feature in CHs. Although this has been noticed since 1999, no physical reason for the peculiar shape could be given. In an attempt to identify the cause of this peculiarity, we address three problems that could not be conclusively resolved in a review article by a study team of the International Space Science Institute (ISSI; Wilhelm et al. 2011) : (1) The physical processes operating at the base and inside of plumes as well as their interaction with the solarwind (SW). (2) The possible contribution of plume plasma to the fast SW streams. (3) The signature of the first-ionization potential (FIP) effect between plumes and inter-plume regions (IPRs). Before the spectroscopic peculiarities in IPRs and plumes in polar coron...

The higher-order statistics of magnetic field magnitude fluctuations in the fast quiet solarwind are quantified systematically, scale by scale. We find a single global non-Gaussian scale-free behavior from minutes to over 5 h. This spans the signature of an inertial range of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence and a ~1/f range in magnetic field components. This global scaling in field magnitude fluctuations is an intrinsic component of the underlying texture of the solarwind and puts a strong constraint on any theory of solar corona and the heliosphere. Intriguingly, the magnetic field and velocity components show scale-dependent dynamic alignment outside of the inertial range.

Coronal jets are transient, collimated eruptions that occur in regions of predominantly open magnetic field in the solar corona. Our understanding of these events has greatly evolved in recent years but several open questions, such as the contribution of coronal jets to the solarwind, remain. Here we present an overview of the observations and numerical modeling of coronal jets, followed by a brief description of "next-generation" simulations that include an advanced description of the energy transfer in the corona ("thermodynamic MHD"), large spherical computational domains, and the solarwind. These new models will allow us to address some of the open questions.

We use the EUV spectrometers aboard SOHO and Hinode and white-light coronagraphs to characterize the physical properties of coronal streamers during Earth/Ulysses quadrature configurations for the previous two solar minimum periods. In addition, comparisons between coronal observations and in situ measurements of solarwind plasma properties are being used to further characterize the origins of slow wind streams. In order to investigate slow solarwind heating and acceleration, we also compare with predictions from three-dimensional MHD models. We aim to use the empirical measurements to distinguish between different proposed physical processes for slow wind acceleration (e.g., waves/turbulence versus reconnection). This work is supported by NASA grant NNX10AQ58G to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

One of the basic properties of the solarwind, that is the high speed of the fast wind, is still not satisfactorily explained. This is mainly due to the theoretical difficulty of treating weakly collisional plasmas. The fluid approach implies that the medium is collision dominated and that the particle velocity distributions are close to Maxwellians. However the electron velocity distributions observed in the solarwind depart significantly from Maxwellians. Recent kinetic collisionless models (called exospheric) using velocity distributions with a suprathermal tail have been able to reproduce the high speeds of the fast solarwind. In this letter we present new developments of these models by generalizing them over a large range of corona conditions. We also present new results obtained by numerical simulations that include collisions. Both approaches calculate the heat flux self-consistently without any assumption on the energy transport. We show that both approaches - the exospheric and the collisional one...

A sheared background flow in a plasma induces coupling between different MHD wave modes, resulting in their mutual transformations with corresponding energy redistributing between the modes. In this way, the energy can be transfered from one wave mode to the other, but energy can also be added to or extracted from the background flow. In the present paper it is investigated whether the wave coupling and energy transfer mechanisms can operate under solarwind conditions. It is shown that this is indeed the case. Hence, the long-period waves observed in the solarwind at r > 0.3 AU might be generated by much faster periodic oscillations in the photosphere of the Sun. Other possible consequences for observable beat phenomena in the wind and the acceleration of the solarwind particles are also discussed.

We have studied the relationship between the solar-wind speed $[V]$ and the coronal magnetic-field properties (a flux expansion factor [$f$] and photospheric magnetic-field strength [$B_{\\mathrm{S}}$]) at all latitudes using data of interplanetary scintillation and solar magnetic field obtained for 24 years from 1986 to 2009. Using a cross-correlation analyses, we verified that $V$ is inversely proportional to $f$ and found that $V$ tends to increase with $B_{\\mathrm{S}}$ if $f$ is the same. As a consequence, we find that $V$ has extremely good linear correlation with $B_{\\mathrm{S}}/f$. However, this linear relation of $V$ and $B_{\\mathrm{S}}/f$ cannot be used for predicting the solar-wind velocity without information on the solar-wind mass flux. We discuss why the inverse relation between $V$ and $f$ has been successfully used for solar-wind velocity prediction, even though it does not explicitly include the mass flux and magnetic-field strength, which are important physical parameters for solar-wind accele...

Full Text Available The Earth's magnetosphere was very strongly disturbed during the passage of the strong shock and the following interacting ejecta on 21–25 October 2001. These disturbances included two intense storms (Dst*≈−250 and −180 nT, respectively. The cessation of this activity at the start of 24 October ushered in a peculiar state of the magnetosphere which lasted for about 28 h and which we discuss in this paper. The interplanetary field was dominated by the sunward component [B=(4.29±0.77, −0.30±0.71, 0.49±0.45 nT]. We analyze global indicators of geomagnetic disturbances, polar cap precipitation, ground magnetometer records, and ionospheric convection as obtained from SuperDARN radars. The state of the magnetosphere is characterized by the following features: (i generally weak and patchy (in time low-latitude dayside reconnection or reconnection poleward of the cusps; (ii absence of substorms; (iii a monotonic recovery from the previous storm activity (Dst corrected for magnetopause currents decreasing from ~−65 to ~−35 nT, giving an unforced decreased of ~1.1 nT/h; (iv the probable absence of viscous-type interaction originating from the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH instability; (v a cross-polar cap potential of just 20–30 kV; (vi a persistent, polar cap region containing (vii very weak, and sometimes absent, electron precipitation and no systematic inter-hemisphere asymmetry. Whereas we therefore infer the presence of a moderate amount of open flux, the convection is generally weak and patchy, which we ascribe to the lack of solarwind driver. This magnetospheric state approaches that predicted by Cowley and Lockwood (1992 but has never yet been observed.

We use ACE/SWICS elemental composition data to compare the variations in solarwind fractionation as measured by SWICS during the last solar maximum (1999-2001), the solar minimum (2006-2009) and the period in which the Genesis spacecraft was collecting solarwind (late 2001 - early 2004). We differentiate our analysis in terms of solarwindregimes (i.e. originating from interstream or coronal hole flows, or coronal mass ejecta). Abundances are normalized to the low-FIP ion magnesium to uncover correlations that are not apparent when normalizing to high-FIP ions. We find that relative to magnesium, the other low-FIP elements are measurably fractionated, but the degree of fractionation does not vary significantly over the solar cycle. For the high-FIP ions, variation in fractionation over the solar cycle is significant: greatest for Ne/Mg and C/Mg, less so for O/Mg, and the least for He/Mg. When abundance ratios are examined as a function of solarwind speed, we find a strong correlation, with the remarkable ...

During the last decade it has been proposed that both the Sun and the solarwind have minimum magnetic states, lowest order levels of magnetism that underlie the 11-yr cycle as well as longer-term variability. Here we review the literature on basal magnetic states at the Sun and in the heliosphere and draw a connection between the two based on the recent deep 2008-2009 minimum between cycles 23 and 24. In particular, we consider the implications of the low solar activity during the recent minimum for the origin of the slow solarwind.

Star (pyramid) dunes are the largest aeolian landforms. They can occur in three types - simple, complex and compound. Development of this type of dunes is usually connected with multidirectional or complex windregimes. The aim of this study was to verify a hypothesis that the star dunes can also develop by a bimodal windregime and by local modifications of nearsurface wind flow directions. Field study was performed on Erg Chebbi, in southern Morocco. Several star and transverse dunes were selected for the study of their shape. The star dunes were analysed concerning their type and position in the dune field. This erg contains all of three types of star dunes together with transverse dunes. The regional wind data show that there are two dominant wind directions - NE (Chergui) and SW (Saheli). To determine the difference in shape of star dunes, we performed topographic surveying by GPS RTK. The results allowed to create 3D models of star dunes. The models were used to determine metric characteristics of star dunes, including area of dune basis, volume, and slope angles. On the basis of 3D models, primary, secondary and, on the compound dunes, tertiary arms were determined. Primary arms on each type of star dunes, as well as crestlines of transverse dunes, have dominant orientation NW-SE, perpendicular to two dominant wind directions. This clearly confirms that star dunes of Erg Chebbi develop by a bimodal windregime In contrast to primary arms, subsidiary (secondary and tertiary) arms are not connected to general windregime. The secondary arms of star dunes occur to be differentially developer. There are more subsidiary arms on SW sides in comparison to the E sides of the dunes where inclination of slopes is constant. It can be therefore inferred that sand has been supplied predominantly from SW direction. This is supported by distribution of the dunes on the erg. Most compound star dunes compose a chain along the E margin of the erg. Comparison of compound star

Full Text Available This paper describes wind tunnel experimental results of wind-induced responses of a solar wing system, and investigates its aeroelastic instability using a scaled model. The model comprised 12 solar wing units, each supported by 2 cables. The gaps between units were set constant. Two sag ratios (i.e. sag/span length were adopted. The wind speed was varied from 0 to 16m/s, and 18 different wind speeds were used. From the experiment, when the sag was 2%, a sudden increase in fluctuating displacement was found near a mean wind speed of 10m/s at a wind direction of 40° A sudden increase in fluctuating displacements was also found near a mean wind speed of 1m/s when the wind direction was larger than 60° When the sag increased to 5%, some differences among units in mean displacements were found and complicate vibration in fluctuating displacement at low wind speed was observed.

We present results from a high-resolution and large-scale hybrid (fluid electrons and particle-in-cell protons) two-dimensional numerical simulation of decaying turbulence. Two distinct spectral regions (separated by a smooth break at proton scales) develop with clear power-law scaling, each one occupying about a decade in wavenumbers. The simulation results simultaneously exhibit several properties of the observed solarwind fluctuations: spectral indices of the magnetic, kinetic, and residual energy spectra in the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) inertial range along with a flattening of the electric field spectrum, an increase in magnetic compressibility, and a strong coupling of the cascade with the density and the parallel component of the magnetic fluctuations at sub-proton scales. Our findings support the interpretation that in the solarwind, large-scale MHD fluctuations naturally evolve beyond proton scales into a turbulent regime that is governed by the generalized Ohm’s law.

Solarwind generated magnetic disturbances are currently one of the major obstacles for improving the accuracy in the determination of the magnetic field due to sources internal to the Earth. In the present study a global MHD model of solarwind magnetosphere interaction is used to obtain...... a physically consistent, divergence-free model of ionospheric, field-aligned and magnetospheric currents in a realistic magnetospheric geometry. The magnetic field near the Earth due to these currents is analyzed by estimating and comparing the contributions from the various parts of the system, with the aim....... At high latitudes the field-aligned component is of partidular interest in connection with internal field-modelling. In the attitude regime of 400-800 km (typical for low Earth orbit satellites) the ionospheric currents are found to contribute significantly to the disturbancance, and account for more than...

In many space plasma environments, the velocity distribution of particles often deviates from Maxwellian and is well-modelled by a kappa distribution function. We have analyzed the ion acoustic soliton in a magnetized consisting of plasma Protons, Helium ions, an electron beam and superthermal hot electrons following kappa distribution function. Under the assumption of weak nonlinearity, the ion-acoustic solitons are described by the Korteweg-de-Vries-Zakharov-Kuznetsov (KdV-ZK) equation. The solution of KdV-ZK equation is used to model the characteristics of the ion acoustic solitary waves in a solarwind magnetoplasma observed at 1 AU. We have found both slow and fast ion acoustic solitons in our study. It is found that the superthermality of hot electrons greatly influence the existence regime of the solitary waves. The numerical results of this study to explain solarwind observations will be discussed in detail.

Kinetic effects resulting from the two-fluid physics play a crucial role in the fast collisionless reconnection, which is a process to explosively release massive energy stored in magnetic fields in space and astrophysical plasmas. In-situ observations in the Earth's magnetosphere provide solid consistence with theoretical models on the point that kinetic effects are required in the collisionless reconnection. However, all the observations associated with solarwind reconnection have been analyzed in the context of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) although a lot of solarwind reconnection exhausts have been reported. Because of the absence of kinetic effects and substantial heating, whether the reconnections are still ongoing when they are detected in the solarwind remains unknown. Here, by dual-spacecraft observations, we report a solarwind reconnection with clear Hall magnetic fields. Its corresponding Alfvenic electron outflow jet, derived from the decouple between ions and electrons, is identified, showing direct evidence for kinetic effects that dominate the collisionless reconnection. The turbulence associated with the exhaust is a kind of background solarwind turbulence, implying that the reconnection generated turbulence has not much developed.

Spacecraft observations have shown that the solarwind plasma is heated during its expansion in the heliosphere. The necessary energy is made available at small scales by a turbulent cascade, although the nature of the heating processes is still debated. Because of the intermittent nature of turbulence, the small-scale energy is inhomogeneously distributed in space, resulting for example in the formation of highly localized current sheets and eddies. In order to understand the small-scale plasma processes occurring in the solarwind, the global and local properties of such energy distribution must be known. Here we study such properties using a proxy derived from the Von Karman-Howart relation for magnetohydrodynamics. The statistical properties of the energy transfer rate in the fluid range of scales are studied in detail using WIND spacecraft plasma and magnetic field measurements and discussed in the framework of the multifractal turbulent cascade. Dependence of the energy dissipation proxy on the solarwind conditions (speed, type, solar activity...) is analysed, and its evolution during solarwind expansion in the heliosphere is described using Helios II and Ulysses measurements. A comparison with other proxies, such as the PVI, is performed. Finally, the local singularity properties of the energy dissipation proxy are conditionally compared to the corresponding particle velocity distributions. This allows the identification of specific plasma features occurring near turbulent dissipation events, and could be used as enhanced mode trigger in future space missions.

Non-Gaussian distributions are ubiquitous in systems having long-range interactions, from real-world networks to astrophysical plasmas. The corona and solarwind are no exception. In this review, we concentrate on the corona and solarwind electrons, whose suprathermal tail governs heat transport and plays a crucial role in the temperature structure and wind production, as first suggested thirty years ago by Olbert and confirmed by a large number of subsequent studies. These non-thermal electrons have been measured in both the corona and solarwind, and are a direct consequence of the fast increase with speed of the Coulomb free-path, compared to the pressure scale-height. This situation has four important consequences: (1) the fluid description, on which the vast majority of solarwind models are based is inadequate; (2) the heat flux is NOT given by the classical Spitzer-Härm expression in the corona and solarwind; (3) for most non-thermal distributions (except the convenient and fashionable Kappa distribution), the fraction of supra-thermal electrons increases with altitude in the corona because of velocity filtration; for example, with a sum of Maxwellians, the hotter the population, the larger the increase with altitude of its fractional contribution; (4) ad-hoc heat addition - assumed in most models, is not necessarily required to produce the observed variation in temperature and the wind acceleration. We will shortly review the observed electron velocity distributions together with the theoretical expectations, the major role of the electric field and the consequences on the heat flux, the temperature structure and the wind acceleration.

As wind and solar photovoltaics (PV) increase in penetration it is increasingly important to examine enabling technologies that can help integrate these resources at large scale. Concentrating solar power (CSP) when deployed with thermal energy storage (TES) can provide multiple services that can help integrate variable generation (VG) resources such as wind and PV. CSP with TES can provide firm, highly flexible capacity, reducing minimum generation constraints which limit penetration and results in curtailment. By acting as an enabling technology, CSP can complement PV and wind, substantially increasing their penetration in locations with adequate solar resource.

We examine the long-term time evolution (1965-2015) of the relationships between solarwind proton temperature (T p) and speed (V p) and between the proton density (n p) and speed using OMNI solarwind observations taken near Earth. We find a long-term decrease in the proton temperature-speed (T p-V p) slope that lasted from 1972 to 2010, but has been trending upward since 2010. Since the solarwind proton density-speed (n p-V p) relationship is not linear like the T p-V p relationship, we perform power-law fits for n p-V p. The exponent (steepness in the n p-V p relationship) is correlated with the solar cycle. This exponent has a stronger correlation with current sheet tilt angle than with sunspot number because the sunspot number maxima vary considerably from cycle to cycle and the tilt angle maxima do not. To understand this finding, we examined the average n p for different speed ranges, and found that for the slow wind n p is highly correlated with the sunspot number, with a lag of approximately four years. The fast wind n p variation was less, but in phase with the cycle. This phase difference may contribute to the n p-V p exponent correlation with the solar cycle. These long-term trends are important since empirical formulas based on fits to T p and V p data are commonly used to identify interplanetary coronal mass ejections, but these formulas do not include any time dependence. Changes in the solarwind density over a solar cycle will create corresponding changes in the near-Earth space environment and the overall extent of the heliosphere.

We quantify the scaling of magnetic energy density in the inertial range of solar-wind turbulence seen in situ at 1 AU with respect to solar activity. At solar maximum, when the coronal magnetic field is dynamic and topologically complex, we find self-similar scaling in the solarwind, whereas at solar minimum, when the coronal fields are more ordered, we find multifractality. This quantifies the solar-wind signature that is of direct coronal origin and distinguishes it from that of local MHD turbulence, with quantitative implications for coronal heating of the solarwind.

At the Sun–Earth distance of one astronomical unit (1 AU), the solarwind is known to be strongly supersonic and super Alfvénic with Mach and Alfvén numbers being on average 12 and 9 respectively. Also, solarwind densities (average ∼ 10 cm-3) and velocities (average ∼ 450 km s-1) at 1 AU, are known to be inversely correlated with low velocities having higher than average densities and vice versa. However, on May 11 and 12 1999 the Earth was engulfed by an unusually low density (< 0.1 cm-3) and low velocity (< 350 km s-1) solarwind with an Alfvén Mach number significantly less than 1. This was a unique low-velocity, low-density, sub-Alfvénic solarwind flow which spacecraft observations have shown lasted more than 24 hours. One consequence of this extremely tenuous solarwind was a spectacular expansion of the Earth’s magnetosphere and bow shock. The expanding bow shock was observed by several spacecraft and reached record upstream distances of nearly 60 Earth radii, the lunar orbit. The event was so dramatic that it has come to be known as the solarwind disappearance event. Though extensive studies of this event were made by many authors in the past, it has only been recently shown that the unusual solarwind flows characterizing this event originated from a small coronal hole in the vicinity of a large active region on the Sun. These recent results have put to rest speculation that such events are associated with global phenomenon like the periodic solar polar field reversal that occurs at the maximum of each solar cycle. In this paper we revisit the 11 May 1999 event, look at other disappearance events that have ocurred in the past, examine the reasons why speculations about the association of such events with global phenomena like solar polar field reversals were made and also examine the role of transient coronal holes as a possible solar source for such events.

We study the feasibility of a novel hybrid solar-wind hybrid system that shares most of its infrastructure and components. During periods of clear sunny days the system will generate electricity from the sun using a parabolic concentrator. The concentrator is formed by individual mirror elements and focuses the light onto high intensity vertical multi-junction (VMJ) cells. During periods of high wind speeds and at night, the same concentrator setup will be reconfigured to channel the wind into a wind turbine which will be used to harness wind energy. In this study we report on the feasibility of this type of solar/wind hybrid energy system. The key mechanisms; optics, cooling mechanism of VMJ cells and air flow through the system were investigated using simulation tools. The results from these simulations, along with a simple economic analysis giving the levelized cost of energy for such a system are presented. An iterative method of design refinement based on the simulation results was used to work towards a prototype design. The levelized cost of the system achieved in the economic analysis shows the system to be a good alternative for a grid isolated site and could be used as a standalone system in regions of lower demand. The new approach to solarwind hybrid system reported herein will pave way for newer generation of hybrid systems that share common infrastructure in addition to the storage and distribution of energy.

A study is reported which addresses the wind load problem for retrofit, roof-mounted solar collector panels and their support structures. The objective was to provide force and moment coefficients which occur for various configurations and wind conditions. Wind tunnel tests were made to investigate geometric variables such as the wind angle, aspect ratio, clearance between the support structure and the roof, inclination of the panels to the flow, and the number of panels in an array. Full-scale tests were conducted to provide measurements which could be compared with wind tunnel tests and investigate loads for a nonuniform wind approaching the structure. The structural analysis investigated the suitability of design techniques and potential problems using current building codes. (LEW)

Using data from the ISEE-3 ion composition instrument (ICI), velocities and abundances of silicon ions in the solarwind have been determined. The period of investigation covers the maximum of solar cycle 21, beginning with launch of ISEE-3 in August 1978 and ending at the removal of the spacecraft from the Lagrangian Point L1 in June 1982. The results generally confirm previous ICI observations of iron, the other heavy element with a low first ionization potential measured with the ICI. Silicon ions (and other ions in the same M/Q range) tend to stream at the bulk velocity of /sup 4/He/sup + +/ in low-speed solarwind. At high-speed solarwind. Si lags by up to or about 20 km/s after /sup 4/He/sup + +/. By means of a minimum variance estimation technique, fluxes (and densities) of silicon in the solarwind have been obtained free of bias. An average Si/O flux ratio of 0.19 +- 0.04 is derived. This value is larger by a factor of 3 or 4 than the Si/O abundance ratio at the solar surface. copyright American Geophysical Union 1989

The launch of the WIND spacecraft will place the satellite into a sunside apogee double-lunar swing-by orbit for a period of one year, after which WIND may be transferred to a Sun-Earth L1 Halo orbit. Information is presented in tabular form on the following topics: Deep Space Network support; frequency assignments, telemetry, command, and ranging.

Extended or generalized similarity is a ubiquitous but not well understood feature of turbulence that is realized over a finite range of scales. The ULYSSES spacecraft solar polar passes at solar minimum provide in situ observations of evolving anisotropic magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in the solarwind under ideal conditions of fast quiet flow. We find a single generalized scaling function characterizes this finite range turbulence and is insensitive to plasma conditions. The recent unusually inactive solar minimum--with turbulent fluctuations down by a factor of approximately 2 in power--provides a test of this invariance.

The Ulysses polar passages are producing a unique set of observations of solar-wind disturbances at high heliographic latitudes. In this paper we use the Yohkoh soft X-ray telescope (SXT) to locate some of these events, as defined by the Ulysses/SWICS data, in the solar corona. Of 8 events, we identify two with flares, three with front-side large arcade events, two with far-side events, and one was not seen in the Ulysses data. The arcade events generally resemble long-duration flares seen in active regions, but are larger, slower, and cooler. We present Yohkoh images of each of these events. In the large arcade events (see Alexander et al., 1996, for a detailed look at one of them) the magnetic morphology at the location of the Yohkoh arcade is generally consistent with the development of a large system of loops. Some of the identifications are ambiguous, and we summarize the reasons for this. From the SWICS data we have obtained ionization temperatures for several events, and find that they have no obvious pattern in relation to the X-ray temperatures; this may be expected on the basis that the interplanetary plasma cloud is physically distinct from the plasma trapped in the corona. Soft X-ray observations of the solar corona show occasional occurrences of large-scale brightenings in the form of arcades of loops. Such structures have been known since Skylab (e.g., Sturrock, 1980), and have a clear relationship with coronal mass ejections (e.g., Kahler, 1977). We now may study this phenomenon statistically with the much more comprehensive Yohkoh observations; with Yohkoh movies we can also begin to extend our knowledge to the three-dimensional development of the structures. At the same time Ulysses has sampled the latitude dependence of the interplanetary effects. With this paper we introduce this subject and provide a preliminary listing of events from the passage of Ulysses through high heliographic latitudes. The starting point of the present survey is a list

We present an XMM-Newton spectrum of diffuse X-ray emission from within the solar system. The spectrum is dominated by O VII and O VIII lines at 0.57 keV and 0.65 keV, O VIII (and possibly Fe XVII) lines at approximately 0.8 keV, Ne IX lines at approximately 0.92 keV, and Mg XI lines at approximately 1.35 keV. This spectrum is consistent with what is expected from charge exchange emission between the highly ionized solarwind and either interstellar neutrals in the heliosphere or material from Earth's exosphere. The emission is clearly seen as a low-energy ( E less than 1.5 keV) spectral enhancement in one of a series of observations of the Hubble Deep Field North. The X-ray enhancement is concurrent with an enhancement in the solarwind measured by the ACE satellite. The solarwind enhancement reaches a flux level an order of magnitude more intense than typical fluxes at 1 AU, and has ion ratios with significantly enhanced higher ionization states. Whereas observations of the solarwind plasma made at a single point reflect only local conditions which may only be representative of solarwind properties with spatial scales ranging from less than half of an Earth radii (approximately 10 s) to 100 Earth radii, X-ray observations of solarwind charge exchange are remote sensing measurements which may provide observations which are significantly more global in character. Besides being of interest in its own right for studies of the solar system, this emission can have significant consequences for observations of more cosmological objects. It can provide emission lines at zero redshift which are of particular interest (e.g., O VII and O VIII) in studies of diffuse thermal emission, and which can therefore act as contamination in objects which cover the entire detector field of view. We propose the use of solarwind monitoring data, such as from the ACE and Wind spacecraft, as a diagnostic to screen for such possibilities.

The ocean region off the Chile-Peru coast is characterized by upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich waters, which drives an exceptionally high biological productivity. This upwelling is induced by the persistent southerly winds along the coast that exhibit a coastal jet structure at intraseasonal scales. Recent climate change studies based on the coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCM) show a strengthening of the large-scale southerlies along the subtropical coast that could lead to an increase in coastal upwelling. However the coastal jet events which represent a considerable source of the synoptic variability of the alongshore winds are characterized by horizontal scale comparable to a AOGCM grid cell size, and cannot be therefore explicitly resolved by the AOGCMs. In order to provide a regional estimate of the winds as predicted by the coarse-resolution AOGCMs, a statistical downscaling method based on multiple linear regression is proposed. Large-scale wind at 10 m and sea level pressure are chosen as the predictor variables for regional 10 m wind. The validation is performed in two steps. First, QuikSCAT and ERS satellite products and NCEP reanalysis for the period 1992-2006 are used to build and validate the statistical model for the present climate. Second, the model is validated under a warmer climate: it is applied to large-scale predictors extracted from HadCM3 AOGCM simulations for the A2 and B2 SRES scenarios (2071-2100); the downscaled wind is then compared with outputs of the PRECIS regional climate model, forced at its boundaries by the same HadCM3 scenarios. To assess climate change impact on the along-shore wind, the statistical downscaling is applied to two contrasted SRES scenarios, namely the so-called preindustrial and CO2 quadrupling. The outputs of the IPSL-CM4 AOGCM are used as predictors. Evolution of the along-shore windregime with a focus on the change of the coastal jet characteristics is discussed. For this particular

Solarwind is probably the best laboratory to study turbulence in astrophysical plasmas. In addition to the presence of magnetic field, the differences with neutral fluid isotropic turbulence are: weakness of collisional dissipation and presence of several characteristic space and time scales. In this paper we discuss observational properties of solarwind turbulence in a large range from the MHD to the electron scales. At MHD scales, within the inertial range, turbulence cascade of magnetic fluctuations develops mostly in the plane perpendicular to the mean field. Solarwind turbulence is compressible in nature. The spectrum of velocity fluctuations do not follow magnetic field one. Probability distribution functions of different plasma parameters are not Gaussian, indicating presence of intermittency. At the moment there is no global model taking into account all these observed properties of the inertial range. At ion scales, turbulent spectra have a break, compressibility increases and the density fluctuat...

Evidence for nonuniform heating in the solarwind plasma near current sheets dynamically generated by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is obtained using measurements from the ACE spacecraft. These coherent structures only constitute 19% of the data, but contribute 50% of the total plasma internal energy. Intermittent heating manifests as elevations in proton temperature near current sheets, resulting in regional heating and temperature enhancements extending over several hours. The number density of non-Gaussian structures is found to be proportional to the mean proton temperature and solarwind speed. These results suggest magnetofluid turbulence drives intermittent dissipation through a hierarchy of coherent structures, which collectively could be a significant source of coronal and solarwind heating.

Although it has been long that spacecraft observed the anisotropy of velocity protons in the solarwind, there is still not a reasonable explanation. In this paper we try to give an explanation from the diffusion plateau of protoncyclotron resonance predicted by the quasi-linear theory for the resonance between the protons and the parallel propagating waves. We consider the effect of dispersion relation on diffusion plateau and notice that the diffusion plateau we have got by using cold plasma dispersion relation accords with the density contours in the velocity phase space detected at 0.3 AU in fast solarwind. For explaining proton distributions obtained in the fast solarwind from 0.7 AU to 1 AU hot plasma dispersion relation should be considered. We also give a theoretical relation of proton thermal anisotropy A and plasma parameter β.

The magnetic disturbances are associated with electric currents as it is well checked at laboratory room scales and described by the Maxwell's equations of electromagnetic field. The analysis of spacecraft observations for more than a quarter of a century failed to provide a self-consistent three-dimensional picture of the solarwind-magnetosphere dynamo generated magnetospheric and ionospheric current systems. The proposed solarwind and the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) driven reconfiguration of the earth's magnetosphere directly accounts for the observed magnetic disturbances. So role of the magnetospheric currents in creation of the magnetic disturbances is reconsidered in accordance with some poorly understood observations. A quantitative agreement with observations is demonstrated and a laboratory experiment to test the suggested model of the solarwind/IMF-magnetosphere interaction is described.

We discuss needs in dielectronic recombination data motivated by recent work directed at a quantitative understanding of ion charge states of various elements observed in situ in the solarwind and CMEs. The competing processes of ionization and recombination lead to departures from collision ionization equilibrium. The use of this as a diagnostic of acceleration and heating processes of the solarwind and CMEs is sensitive to the accuracy of the atomic rates in a way that steady state ionization equilibrium plasmas are not. The most pressing need is dielectronic recombination rates for ions Fe8+-12+. These are among the dominant species observed in various regions of the solarwind and CMEs, and in remotely sensed EUV spectra.

Wind and solar power are known to be highly influenced by weather events and may ramp up or down abruptly. Such events in the power production influence not only the availability of energy, but also the stability of the entire power grid. By analysing significant amounts of data from several regions around the world with resolutions of seconds to minutes, we provide strong evidence that renewable wind and solar sources exhibit multiple types of variability and nonlinearity in the time scale of {\\it seconds} and characterise their stochastic properties. In contrast to previous findings, we show that only the jumpy characteristic of renewable sources decreases when increasing the spatial size over which the renewable energies are harvested. Otherwise, the strong non-Gaussian, intermittent behaviour in the cumulative power of the total field survives even for a country-wide distribution of the systems. The strong fluctuating behaviour of renewable wind and solar sources can be well characterised by Kolmogorov-li...

Kinetic plasma processes are investigated in the framework of solarwind turbulence, employing hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell (HVM) simulations. Statistical analysis of spacecraft observation data relates proton temperature anisotropy T /T {sub ∥} and parallel plasma beta β{sub ∥}, where subscripts refer to the ambient magnetic field direction. Here, this relationship is recovered using an ensemble of HVM simulations. By varying plasma parameters, such as plasma beta and fluctuation level, the simulations explore distinct regions of the parameter space given by T /T {sub ∥} and β{sub ∥}, similar to solarwind sub-datasets. Moreover, both simulation and solarwind data suggest that temperature anisotropy is not only associated with magnetic intermittent events, but also with gradient-type structures in the flow and in the density. This connection between non-Maxwellian kinetic effects and various types of intermittency may be a key point for understanding the complex nature of plasma turbulence.

Kinetic plasma processes have been investigated in the framework of solarwind turbulence, employing Hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell (HVM) simulations. The dependency of proton temperature anisotropy T_{\\perp}/T_{\\parallel} on the parallel plasma beta \\beta_{\\parallel}, commonly observed in spacecraft data, has been recovered using an ensemble of HVM simulations. By varying plasma parameters, such as plasma beta and fluctuation level, the simulations explore distinct regions of the parameter space given by T_{\\perp}/T_{\\parallel} and \\beta_{\\parallel}, similar to solarwind sub-datasets. Moreover, both simulation and solarwind data suggest that temperature anisotropy is not only associated with magnetic intermittent events, but also with gradient-type structures in the flow and in the density. This connection between non-Maxwellian kinetic effects and various types of intermittency may be a key point for understanding the complex nature of plasma turbulence.

The SolarWind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument on National Aeronautics and Space Administration's New Horizons Pluto mission has collected solarwind observations en route from Earth to Pluto, and these observations continue beyond Pluto. Few missions have explored the solarwind in the outer heliosphere making this dataset a critical addition to the field. We created a forward model of SWAP count rates, which includes a comprehensive instrument response function based on laboratory and flight calibrations. By fitting the count rates with this model, the proton density (n), speed (V), and temperature (T) parameters are determined. Comparisons between SWAP parameters and both propagated 1 au observations and prior Voyager 2 observations indicate consistency in both the range and mean wind values. These comparisons as well as our additional findings confirm that small and midsized solarwind structures are worn down with increasing distance due to dynamic interaction of parcels of wind with different speed. For instance, the T-V relationship steepens, as the range in V is limited more than the range in T with distance. At times the T-V correlation clearly breaks down beyond 20 au, which may indicate wind currently expanding and cooling may have an elevated T reflecting prior heating and compression in the inner heliosphere. The power of wind parameters at shorter periodicities decreases with distance as the longer periodicities strengthen. The solar rotation periodicity is present in temperature beyond 20 au indicating the observed parcel temperature may reflect not only current heating or cooling, but also heating occurring closer to the Sun.

The SolarWind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument on National Aeronautics and Space Administration's New Horizons Pluto mission has collected solarwind observations en route from Earth to Pluto, and these observations continue beyond Pluto. Few missions have explored the solarwind in the outer heliosphere making this dataset a critical addition to the field. We created a forward model of SWAP count rates, which includes a comprehensive instrument response function based on laboratory and flight calibrations. By fitting the count rates with this model, the proton density (n), speed (V), and temperature (T) parameters are determined. Comparisons between SWAP parameters and both propagated 1 au observations and prior Voyager 2 observations indicate consistency in both the range and mean wind values. These comparisons as well as our additional findings confirm that small and midsized solarwind structures are worn down with increasing distance due to dynamic interaction of parcels of wind with different speed. For instance, the T–V relationship steepens, as the range in V is limited more than the range in T with distance. At times the T–V correlation clearly breaks down beyond 20 au, which may indicate wind currently expanding and cooling may have an elevated T reflecting prior heating and compression in the inner heliosphere. The power of wind parameters at shorter periodicities decreases with distance as the longer periodicities strengthen. The solar rotation periodicity is present in temperature beyond 20 au indicating the observed parcel temperature may reflect not only current heating or cooling, but also heating occurring closer to the Sun.

At present it remains to address why the fast solarwind is fast and the slow wind is slow. Recently we have shown that the field line curvature may substantially influence the wind speed $v$, thereby offering an explanation for the Arge et al. finding that $v$ depends on more than just the flow tube expansion factor. Here we show by extensive numerical examples that the correlation between $v$ and field line curvature is valid for rather general base boundary conditions and for rather general heating functions. Furthermore, the effect of field line curvature is even more pronounced when the proton-alpha particle speed difference is examined. We suggest that any solarwind model has to take into account the field line shape for any quantitative analysis to be made.

Three different theoretical approaches are presented to identify pathways to organic solar cells with power conversion efficiencies in excess of 20%. A radiation limit for organic solar cells is introduced that elucidates the role of charge-transfer (CT) state absorption. Provided this CT action is

Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians (ACBCI) was awarded a grant by the Department of Energy (DOE) to study the feasibility of a wind and/or solar renewable energy project at the Whitewater Ranch (WWR) property of ACBCI. Red Mountain Energy Partners (RMEP) was engaged to conduct the study. The ACBCI tribal lands in the Coachella Valley have very rich renewable energy resources. The tribe has undertaken several studies to more fully understand the options available to them if they were to move forward with one or more renewable energy projects. With respect to the resources, the WWR property clearly has excellent wind and solar resources. The DOE National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has continued to upgrade and refine their library of resource maps. The newer, more precise maps quantify the resources as among the best in the world. The wind and solar technology available for deployment is also being improved. Both are reducing their costs to the point of being at or below the costs of fossil fuels. Technologies for energy storage and microgrids are also improving quickly and present additional ways to increase the wind and/or solar energy retained for later use with the network management flexibility to provide power to the appropriate locations when needed. As a result, renewable resources continue to gain more market share. The transitioning to renewables as the major resources for power will take some time as the conversion is complex and can have negative impacts if not managed well. While the economics for wind and solar systems continue to improve, the robustness of the WWR site was validated by the repeated queries of developers to place wind and/or solar there. The robust resources and improving technologies portends toward WWR land as a renewable energy site. The business case, however, is not so clear, especially when the potential investment portfolio for ACBCI has several very beneficial and profitable alternatives.

A major challenge in solar and heliospheric physics is understanding the origin and nature of the so-called slow solarwind. The Sun's atmosphere is divided into magnetically open regions, known as coronal holes, where the plasma streams out freely and fills the solar system, and closed regions, where the plasma is confined to coronal loops. The boundary between these regions extends outward as the heliospheric current sheet (HCS). Measurements of plasma composition strongly imply that much of the slow wind consists of plasma from the closed corona that escapes onto open field lines, presumably by field-line opening or by interchange reconnection. Both of these processes are expected to release closed-field plasma into the solarwind within and immediately adjacent to the HCS. Mysteriously, however, slow wind with closed-field plasma composition is often observed in situ far from the HCS. We use high-resolution, three-dimensional, magnetohydrodynamic simulations to calculate the dynamics of a coronal hole with a geometry that includes a narrow corridor flanked by closed field and is driven by supergranule-like flows at the coronal-hole boundary. These dynamics produce giant arcs of closed-field plasma that originate at the open-closed boundary in the corona, but extend far from the HCS and span tens of degrees in latitude and longitude at Earth. We conclude that such structures can account for the long-puzzling slow-wind observations.

The internal rotation rates of the giant planets can be estimated by cloud motions, but such an approach is not very precise because absolute wind speeds are not known a priori and depend on latitude: periodicities in the radio emissions, thought to be tied to the internal planetary magnetic field, are used instead. Saturn, despite an apparently axisymmetric magnetic field, emits kilometre-wavelength (radio) photons from auroral sources. This emission is modulated at a period initially identified as 10 h 39 min 24 +/- 7 s, and this has been adopted as Saturn's rotation period. Subsequent observations, however, revealed that this period varies by +/-6 min on a timescale of several months to years. Here we report that the kilometric radiation period varies systematically by +/-1% with a characteristic timescale of 20-30 days. Here we show that these fluctuations are correlated with solarwind speed at Saturn, meaning that Saturn's radio clock is controlled, at least in part, by conditions external to the planet's magnetosphere. No correlation is found with the solarwind density, dynamic pressure or magnetic field; the solarwind speed therefore has a special function. We also show that the long-term fluctuations are simply an average of the short-term ones, and therefore the long-term variations are probably also driven by changes in the solarwind.

The results of an examination of the feasibility of using coupled wind-solar-hydro power generation systems to provide all of Portugal's electricity by the year 2000 are reported. Portugal used 15.6 TWh of electricity in 1981, of which hydro supplied 10 TWh. Demand is expected to reach 34 TWh in 2000 AD. The full development of hydropower resource would furnish 18 TWh and a storage capacity of 4.5 TWh. The installed hydro system could meet the peak demand of 6 GW, while solar cells and wind turbines must produce 16 TWh annually plus a reserve. The Growian wind turbine, 100 m tall, is considered for its 2.2 MW output. A coastal strip of wind turbines 150 x 20 km, with 1 km spacing between the machines, would be needed to produce 5.4 GW of power. Partially tracking solar cell arrays generating 9.4 GW of electricity would require an area of 100 sq km. Computer simulations of the annual rainfall, combined with projections of the variations in wind-solar output, demonstrates that a reserve margin of 1.20 will be necessary. The costs of installation of the renewable energy converters are estimated at about three times that currently necessary for obtaining the same capacity from fission power plants, although the situation may change due to import and technical considerations.

The steady, supersonic outflow from the Sun we call the solarwind was first posited in the 1950s and initial theories rightly linked the acceleration of the wind to the existence of the million-degree solar corona. Still today, the wind acceleration mechanisms and the coronal heating processes remain unsolved challenges in solar physics. In this work, I seek to answer a portion of the mystery by focusing on a particular acceleration process: Alfven waves launched by the motion of magnetic field footpoints in the photosphere. The entire corona is threaded with magnetic loops and flux tubes that open up into the heliosphere. I have sought a better understanding of the role these magnetic fields play in determining solarwind properties in open flux tubes. After an introduction of relevant material, I discuss my parameter study of magnetic field profiles and the statistical understanding we can draw from the resulting steady-state wind. In the chapter following, I describe how I extended this work to consider t...

We examine the long-term time evolution (1965-2015) of the relationships between solarwind proton temperature (Tp) and speed (Vp) and between the proton density (np) and speed using OMNI solarwind observations taken near Earth. We find a long-term decrease in the proton temperature-speed (Tp-Vp) slope that lasted from 1972 to 2010, but has been trending upward since 2010. Since the solarwind proton density-speed (np-Vp) relationship is not linear like the Tp-Vp relationship, we perform power law fits for np-Vp. The exponent (steepness in the np-Vp relationship) is correlated with the solar cycle. This exponent has a stronger correlation with current sheet tilt angle than with sunspot number because the sunspot number maxima vary considerably from cycle to cycle and the tilt angle maxima do not. To understand this finding, we examined the average np for different speed ranges, and found that for the slow wind np is highly correlated with the sunspot number with a lag of ~4 years. The fast wind np variation ...

Greater penetrations of variable renewable generation on some electric grids have resulted in increased levels of curtailment in recent years. Studies of renewable energy grid integration have found that curtailment levels may grow as the penetration of wind and solar energy generation increases. This paper reviews international experience with curtailment of wind and solar energy on bulk power systems in recent years, with a focus on eleven countries in Europe, North America, and Asia. It examines levels of curtailment, the causes of curtailment, curtailment methods and use of market-based dispatch, as well as operational, institutional, and other changes that are being made to reduce renewable energy curtailment.

This report summarizes the results of the first 12 months of our program to study the interaction of the Earth's magnetosphere with the solarwind on the far flanks of the bow shock. This study employs data from the ISEE-3 spacecraft during its traversals of the Earth's magnetotail and correlative data from spacecraft monitoring the solarwind upstream. Our main effort to date has involved assembling data sets and developing new plotting programs. Two talks were given at the Spring Meeting of the American Geophysical Union describing our initial results from analyzing data from the far flank foreshock and magnetosheath. The following sections summarize our results.

Measurements of fluctuations of electric fields in the frequency range from a fraction of one Hz to 12.5 Hz are presented, and corrected for the Lorentz transformation of magnetic fluctuations to give the electric fields in the plasma frame. The electric fields are large enough to provide the dominant force on the ions of the solarwind in the region near the ion cyclotron frequency of protons, larger than the force due to magnetic fluctuations. They provide sufficient velocity space diffusion or heating to counteract conservation of magnetic moment in the expanding solarwind to maintain nearly isotropic velocity distributions.

The proton and electron temperature anisotropies in the solarwind are constrained by the instability thresholds for temperature-anisotropy-driven kinetic plasma instabilities. The modifications to the marginal instability conditions from accounting for the influence of damping connected with the collisional effects in the solarwind plasma are calculated for right- and left-handed polarized parallel propagating Alfvén waves and mirror and firehose fluctuations. These modifications provide tighter threshold constraints compared to the marginal thresholds but do not fully explain the observations at small values of the parallel plasma beta.

This Letter shows the first results from the solarwind monitor onboard the Spektr-R spacecraft which measures plasma moments with a time resolution of 31 ms. This high-time resolution allows us to make direct observations of solarwind turbulence below ion kinetic length scales. We present examples of the frequency spectra of the density, velocity, and thermal velocity. Our study reveals that although these parameters exhibit the same behavior at the magnetohydrodynamic scale, their spectra are remarkably different at the kinetic scale.

The distribution of solarwind implanted noble gases in lunar samples depends on implantation energy, fluence, diffusion, radiation damage and erosion. It is known that at least the lighter rare gases are fractionated after implantation, but the redistribution processes, which mainly drive the losses, are not well understood. Some information about this one can get by looking at the concentration profiles of solarwind implanted He-4 measured by the Gas Ion Probe in single lunar grains. The observed profiles were divided in three groups. These groups are illustrated and briefly discussed.

In Southern California, it has long been understood that foehn-type Santa Ana winds are an important factor in the occurrence of large wildfires. Although a variety of anecdotal observations and statistical analyses have confirmed the importance of these winds to wildfire, particularly in the Fall months when Santa Ana winds overlap with dry fuels from summer drought, many of the details of those winds' impacts on fire remain obscure. This paper uses data regarding individual fires from California's Fire and Resource Assessment Program database and a compilation of Santa Ana Wind days (SAW days) published by Abatzoglou et al. in 2013 to assess the relationship of Santa Ana winds to fire occurrence and size in Southern California. The analysis included 474 fires larger than 20 ha (~50 acres).that burned on the four Southern California national forests (Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres and San Bernardino) between 1948 and 2010. Overall, just 10.3% of the fires started on SAW days, and 14.4% experienced at least one SAW day between start and containment dates. The impact of Santa Ana winds is greater, however, with increasing fire size. For fires > 4000 ha, 18.4% began on SAW days, with 30.4% experiencing at least one SAW day before containment. And 20% of fires > 20000 ha started on SAW days, with 50% including one or more SAW days. Fires beginning on SAW days were larger, with a mean of 6239 ha compared to 2150 ha for fires that began on non-SAW days. Only 2% of the fires that began on SAW days were started by lightning, suggesting that the impact of Santa Ana winds on Southern California fire regimes may be enhanced by humans' role in ignitions.

The wave measurements from the Ion Release Module and the United Kingdom Satellite in the diamagnetic cavity, the transition region, and the upstream region are examined. Solarwind conditions during the releases on September 11 and 20, 1984 are described. The quasi-static electric field, wideband, high-frequency waves, and medium and VLF waves observations are analyzed. The data reveal that extremely low levels of wave activity are observed in the boundary between the diamagnetic cavity and external magnetic field, medium and VLF waves in the ion acoustic electrostatic cyclotron harmonic modes are detected in the transition region from the diamagnetic cavity to the solarwind, and decay in the magnetic field strength and density, and an increase in the quasi-static electric field is seen in the upstream edge of the transition region. The emissions observed are related to the different phases of the Li cloud development and different spatial regimes of the Li plasma-solarwind interaction.

We investigate magnetized solar-like stellar winds by means of self-consistent three-dimensional (3D) magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) numerical simulations. We analyze winds with different magnetic field intensities and densities as to explore the dependence on the plasma-beta parameter. By solving the fully ideal 3D MHD equations, we show that the plasma-beta parameter is the crucial parameter in the configuration of the steady-state wind. Therefore, there is a group of magnetized flows that would present the same terminal velocity despite of its thermal and magnetic energy densities, as long as the plasma-beta parameter is the same.

Stellar winds from active solar type stars can play a crucial role in removal of stellar angular momentum and erosion of planetary atmospheres. However, major wind properties except for mass loss rates cannot be directly derived from observations. We employed a three dimensional magnetohydrodynamic Alfven wave driven solarwind model, ALF3D, to reconstruct the solarwind parameters including the mass loss rate, terminal velocity and wind temperature at 0.7, 2 and 4.65 Gyr. Our model treats the wind thermal electrons, protons and pickup protons as separate fluids and incorporates turbulence transport, eddy viscosity, turbulent resistivity, and turbulent heating to properly describe proton and electron temperatures of the solarwind. To study the evolution of the solarwind, we specified three input model parameters, the plasma density, Alfven wave amplitude and the strength of the dipole magnetic field at the wind base for each of three solarwind evolution models that are consistent with observational constra...

Green Power Partnership webinar reviewing the state of the renewable energy industry as a whole, with a focus on wind and solar power and exploring recent marketplace innovations in wind and solar power and renewable energy purchases.

Recent studies have shown that shrouded wind turbines can generate greater power compared to bare turbines. A solar chimney generates an upward draft of wind inside a tower and a shroud around the wind turbine. There are numerous empty silos on farms in the U.S. that can be converted to solar chimneys with minor modifications at modest cost. The objective of this study is to determine the potential of these silos/chimneys for generating wind power. The study is conducted through analytical/computational approach by employing the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. Computations are performed for five different geometric configurations consisting of a turbine, a cylindrical silo, and/or a venturi and/or a diffuser using the dimensions of typical silos and assuming Class 3 wind velocity. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with the Boussinesq approximation and a two equation realizable {kappa}-{epsilon} model are employed in the calculations, and the turbine is modeled as an actuator disk. The power coefficient (Cp) and generated power are calculated for the five cases. Consistent with recent literature, it was found that the silos with diffusers increase the Cp beyond Betz’s limit significantly and thus the generated power. It should be noted that Cp is calculated by normalizing it by the turbine area swept by the wind. This study shows the potential of using abandoned silos in the mid-west and other parts of the country for localized wind power generation.

Full Text Available Recent studies have shown that shrouded wind turbines can generate greater power compared to bare turbines. A solar chimney generates an upward draft of wind inside a tower and a shroud around the wind turbine. There are numerous empty silos on farms in the U.S. that can be converted to solar chimneys with minor modifications at modest cost. The objective of this study is to determine the potential of these silos/chimneys for generating wind power. The study is conducted through analytical/computational approach by employing the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD software. Computations are performed for five different geometric configurations consisting of a turbine, a cylindrical silo, and/or a venturi and/or a diffuser using the dimensions of typical silos and assuming Class 3 wind velocity. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with the Boussinesq approximation and a two equation realizable k – ε model are employed in the calculations, and the turbine is modeled as an actuator disk. The power coefficient (Cp and generated power are calculated for the five cases. Consistent with recent literature, it was found that the silos with diffusers increase the Cp beyond Betz’s limit significantly and thus the generated power. It should be noted that Cp is calculated by normalizing it by the turbine area swept by the wind. This study shows the potential of using abandoned silos in the mid-west and other parts of the country for localized wind power generation.

Whilst the UNFCCC Paris Agreement Climate change was ratified in November, 2016 saw the highest global temperature anomaly on record at 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels. As such there is urgent need to reduce CO2 emissions by a move away from fossil fuels and towards renewable electricity energy technologies. As the principal renewable technologies of solar PV and wind turbines contribute an increasing fraction to the electricity grid, questions of cumulative intermittency and the large-scale geographic distribution of each technology need to be addressed. In this study our initial emphasis is on a calculation of a relatively high spatial resolution (0.1° × 0.1°) daily gridded dataset of solar irradiance data, over a 10 year period (2006-2015). This is achieved by coupling established sources of satellite data (MODIS SSF level2 instantaneous footprint data) to a well-validated radiative transfer model, here LibRadTran. We utilise both a morning and afternoon field for two cloud layers (optical depth and cloud fraction) interpolated to hourly grids, together with aerosol optical depth, topographic height and solar zenith angle. These input parameters are passed to a 5-D LUT of LibRadTran results to construct hourly estimates of the solar irradiance field, which is then integrated to a daily total. For the daily wind resource we rely on the 6 hourly height-adjusted ECMWF ERA-Interim reanalysis wind fields, but separated into onshore, offshore and deep water components. From these datasets of the solar and wind resources we construct 22 different distribution strategies for solar PV and wind turbines based on the long-term availability of each resource. Combining these distributions with the original daily gridded datasets enables each distribution strategy to be then assessed in terms of the day-to-day variability, the installed capacity required to maintain a baseline supply, and the relative proportions of each technology. Notably for the NW European area

Parabolic trough power plants are often located in areas that are subjected to high wind speeds, as an open terrain without any obstructions is beneficial for the plant performance. The wind impacts both the structural requirements and the performance of the plant. The aerodynamic loads from the wind impose strong requirements on the support structure of the reflectors, and they also impact the tracking accuracy. On a thermal level the airflow around the glass envelope of the receiver tube cools its outer surface through forced convection, thereby contributing to the heat loss. Based on previous studies at the level of an individual row of collectors, this study analyses the wind effects in a full-scale solar field of different continuous and staggered trough designs. The airflow around several rows of parabolic trough collectors (PTC) is simulated at full scale in steady state simulations in an atmospheric boundary layer flow using the commercial computational fluid dynamics software ANSYSO® CFX 15.0. The effect of the wake of a collector row on the following collectors is analysed, and the aerodynamic loads are compared between the different geometries. The outermost collectors of a solar field experience the highest wind forces, as the rows in the interior of the solar field are protected from high wind speeds. While the aerodynamic forces in the interior of the solar field are almost independent of the collector shape, the deeper troughs (with large rim angles) tested in this study show a lower heat loss due to forced convection on the outer surface of the receiver tube than the shallower ones (with small rim angles) in most of the solar field.

Models for the origin of the slow solarwind must account for two seemingly contradictory observations: the slow wind has the composition of the closed-field corona, implying that it originates from the continuous opening and closing of flux at the boundary between open and closed field. On the other hand, the slow wind also has large angular width, up to approx.60deg, suggesting that its source extends far from the open-closed boundary. We propose a model that can explain both observations. The key idea is that the source of the slow wind at the Sun is a network of narrow (possibly singular) open-field corridors that map to a web of separatrices and quasi-separatrix layers in the heliosphere. We compute analytically the topology of an open-field corridor and show that it produces a quasi-separatrix layer in the heliosphere that extends to angles far from the heliospheric current sheet. We then use an MHD code and MDI/SOHO observations of the photospheric magnetic field to calculate numerically, with high spatial resolution, the quasi-steady solarwind, and magnetic field for a time period preceding the 2008 August 1 total solar eclipse. Our numerical results imply that, at least for this time period, a web of separatrices (which we term an S-web) forms with sufficient density and extent in the heliosphere to account for the observed properties of the slow wind. We discuss the implications of our S-web model for the structure and dynamics of the corona and heliosphere and propose further tests of the model. Key words: solarwind - Sun: corona - Sun: magnetic topology

When within the inner solar system, comets possess gaseous atmospheres. The gases therein are ionized, and eventually join the solarwind. This thesis describes an investigation of the interaction of comets with the solarwind. The work begins with an overview of the processes involved in the comet-solarwind interaction region, and the domains and boundaries that exist in the region. A review of remote observations of cometary ions is given. The characteristics of visible plasma features are summarized, together with the theories proposed to explain them. An overview of the Giotto spacecraft and its instruments, and a description of its mission to two comets are presented. Ground-based observations were obtained of the ion features present in Comet C/1996 B2 Hyakutake. The morphologies and motions of the comet's plasma features are described. The formation of tail rays was captured during a high temporal resolution image sequence. A gas production rate estimate is derived from the observations, and a model of ray morphologies is proposed, based partly upon observational evidence. 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova and C/1996 Q1 Tabur were also observed; however, no strong ion features were detected. An analysis of the plasma features of 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup then follows. A description of the solarwind conditions at that comet during the Giotto encounter is given, and an estimate of its production rate is made. Ground-based observations of Grigg-Skjellerup are compared to in-situ Giotto data. Morphological features were detected in ground-based images; it is proposed that they could have been linked to certain solarwind discontinuities. A qualitative description of a model of ion ray formation then follows. The thesis concludes with a summary of the main results.

Models for the origin of the slow solarwind must account for two seemingly contradictory observations: The slow wind has the composition of the closed-field corona, implying that it originates at the open-closed field boundary layer, but it also has large angular width, up to 40 degrees. We propose a model that can explain both observations. The key idea is that the source of the slow wind at the Sun is a network of narrow (possibly singular) open-field corridors that map to a web of separatrices and quasi-separatrix layers in the heliosphere. We calculate with high numerical resolution, the quasi-steady solarwind and magnetic field for a Carrington rotation centered about the August 1, 2008 total solar eclipse. Our numerical results demonstrate that, at least for this time period, a web of separatrices (S-web) forms with sufficient density and extent in the heliosphere to account for the observed properties of the slow wind. We discuss the implications of our S-web model for the structure and dynamics of the corona and heliosphere, and propose further tests of the model. This work was supported, in part, by the NASA HTP, TR&T and SR&T programs.

Full Text Available Pyroelectric harvesters use temperature fluctuations to generate electrical outputs. Solar radiation and waste heat are rich energy sources that can be harvested. Pyroelectric energy converters offer a novel and direct energy-conversion technology by transforming time-dependent temperatures directly into electricity. Moreover, the great challenge for pyroelectric energy harvesting lies in finding promising temperature variations or an alternating thermal loading in real situations. Hence, in this article, a novel pyroelectric harvester integrating solar radiation with wind power by the pyroelectric effect is proposed. Solar radiation is a thermal source, and wind is a dynamic potential. A disk generator is used for harvesting wind power. A mechanism is considered to convert the rotary energy of the disk generator to drive a shutter for generating temperature variations in pyroelectric cells using a planetary gear system. The optimal period of the pyroelectric cells is 35 s to harvest the stored energy, about 70 μJ, while the rotary velocity of the disk generator is about 31 RPM and the wind speed is about 1 m/s. In this state, the stored energy acquired from the pyroelectric harvester is about 75% more than that from the disk generator. Although the generated energy of the proposed pyroelectric harvester is less than that of the disk generator, the pyroelectric harvester plays a complementary role when the disk generator is inactive in situations of low wind speed.

The solarwind environment has a large influence on the transport of cosmic rays. This chapter discusses the observations of the solarwind plasma and magnetic field in the outer heliosphere and the heliosheath. In the supersonic solarwind, interaction regions with large magnetic fields form barriers to cosmic ray transport. This effect, the "CR-B" relationship, has been quantified and is shown to be valid everywhere inside the termination shock (TS). In the heliosheath, this relationship breaks down, perhaps because of a change in the nature of the turbulence. Turbulence is compressive in the heliosheath, whereas it was non-compressive in the solarwind. The plasma pressure in the outer heliosphere is dominated by the pickup ions which gain most of the flow energy at the TS. The heliosheath plasma and magnetic field are highly variable on scales as small as ten minutes. The plasma flow turns away from the nose roughly as predicted, but the radial speeds at Voyager 1 are much less than those at Voyager 2, which is not understood. Despite predictions to the contrary, magnetic reconnection is not an important process in the inner heliosheath with only one observed occurrence to date.

Some observational examples for the possible occurrence of the turbulent magnetic reconnection in the solarwind are found by analysing Helios spacecraft’s high resolution data. The phenom-ena of turbulent magnetic reconnections in small scale solarwind are simulated by introducing a third order accuracy upwind compact difference scheme to the compressible two-dimensional MHD flow. Numerical results verify that the turbulent magnetic reconnection process could occur in small scale in-terplanetary solarwind, which is a basic feature characterizing the magnetic reconnection in high-mag-netie Peynolds number ( RM = 2 000-10 000) solarwind. The configurations of the magnetic reconnection could evolve from a single X-line to a multiple X-line reconnection, exhibiting a complex picture of the formation, merging and evolution of magnetic islands, and finally the magnetic reconnection would evolve into a low-energy state. Its life-span of evolution is about one hour order of magnitude. Various magnetic and f

Solarwind electron and ion distribution functions measured simultaneously with or close to times of intense electrostatic fluctuations are subjected to a linear Vlasov stability analysis. Although all distributions tested were found to be stable, the analysis suggests that the ion beam instability is the most likely source of the fluctuations.

This Study investigates the operational impact of up to 35% energy penetration of wind, photovoltaics (PVs), and concentrating solar power (CSP) on the power system operated by the WestConnect group of utilities in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

Renewables portfolio standards (RPS) encourage large-scale deployment of wind and solar electric power. Their power output varies rapidly, even when several sites are added together. In many locations, natural gas generators are the lowest cost resource available to compensate for this variability, and must ramp up and down quickly to keep the grid stable, affecting their emissions of NOx and CO2. We model a wind or solar photovoltaic plus gas system using measured 1-min time-resolved emissions and heat rate data from two types of natural gas generators, and power data from four wind plants and one solar plant. Over a wide range of renewable penetration, we find CO2 emissions achieve approximately 80% of the emissions reductions expected if the power fluctuations caused no additional emissions. Using steam injection, gas generators achieve only 30-50% of expected NOx emissions reductions, and with dry control NOx emissions increase substantially. We quantify the interaction between state RPSs and NOx constraints, finding that states with substantial RPSs could see significant upward pressure on NOx permit prices, if the gas turbines we modeled are representative of the plants used to mitigate wind and solar power variability.

The solarwind is a constantly-flowing stream of charged particles that expands from the sun's outer atmosphere into interplanetary space. This plasma carries the sun's magnetic field along with it, where it interacts with and causes disruptions in the earth's magnetic field. Our understanding of the solarwind is vital to efforts toward minimizing the impact of these disturbances on both ground and space-based systems. Using interplanetary scintillation data gathered by the ground-based Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT) in India, we have constructed boundary maps of solarwind velocities at 1 day intervals. For a simple, first approximation, we use what is called the "P-point" method to crudely estimate the solarwind velocity at the point of closest approach to the Sun along each line of sight. Then we trace the P-point values back to a spherical surface at 0.2 AU where we interpolate them to a structured gird. The resulting boundary maps can serve as the initial input to a time-dependent MHD tomography program being developed at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

This article presents novel results revealing non-equilibrium phase transition processes in the solarwind plasma during a strong shock event, which took place on 26th September 2011. Solarwind plasma is a typical case of stochastic spatiotemporal distribution of physical state variables such as force fields (B → , E →) and matter fields (particle and current densities or bulk plasma distributions). This study shows clearly the non-extensive and non-Gaussian character of the solarwind plasma and the existence of multi-scale strong correlations from the microscopic to the macroscopic level. It also underlines the inefficiency of classical magneto-hydro-dynamic (MHD) or plasma statistical theories, based on the classical central limit theorem (CLT), to explain the complexity of the solarwind dynamics, since these theories include smooth and differentiable spatial-temporal functions (MHD theory) or Gaussian statistics (Boltzmann-Maxwell statistical mechanics). On the contrary, the results of this study indicate the presence of non-Gaussian non-extensive statistics with heavy tails probability distribution functions, which are related to the q-extension of CLT. Finally, the results of this study can be understood in the framework of modern theoretical concepts such as non-extensive statistical mechanics (Tsallis, 2009), fractal topology (Zelenyi and Milovanov, 2004), turbulence theory (Frisch, 1996), strange dynamics (Zaslavsky, 2002), percolation theory (Milovanov, 1997), anomalous diffusion theory and anomalous transport theory (Milovanov, 2001), fractional dynamics (Tarasov, 2013) and non-equilibrium phase transition theory (Chang, 1992).

Full Text Available Due to the fact that solar and wind power is intermittent and unpredictable in nature, higher penetration of their types in existing power system could cause and create high technical challenges especially to weak grids or stand-alone systems without proper and enough storage capacity. By integrating the two renewable resources into an optimum combination, the impact of the variable nature of solar and wind resources can be partially resolved and the overall system becomes more reliable and economical to run. This paper provides a review of challenges and opportunities / solutions of hybrid solar PV and wind energy integration systems. Voltage and frequency fluctuation, and harmonics are major power quality issues for both grid-connected and stand-alone systems with bigger impact in case of weak grid. This can be resolved to a large extent by having proper design, advanced fast response control facilities, and good optimization of the hybrid systems. The paper gives a review of the main research work reported in the literature with regard to optimal sizing design, power electronics topologies and control. The paper presents a review of the state of the art of both grid-connected and stand-alone hybrid solar and wind systems.

Recent developments in pumping technologies have allowed for efficient use of renewable energies like wind and solar to power new pumps for remote water pumping. A helical type, positive displacement pump was developed a few years ago and recently modified to accept input from a variable power sourc...

This Study investigates the operational impact of up to 35% energy penetration of wind, photovoltaics (PVs), and concentrating solar power (CSP) on the power system operated by the WestConnect group of utilities in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

We examine the role of the magnetosheath in solarwind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling using the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms plasma and magnetic field observations in the magnetosheath together with OMNI solarwind data and auroral electrojet recordings from the International Monitor for Auroral Geomagnetic Effects (IMAGE) magnetometer chain. We demonstrate that the electric field and Poynting flux reaching the magnetopause are not linear functions of the electric field and Poynting flux observed in the solarwind: the electric field and Poynting flux at the magnetopause during higher driving conditions are lower than those predicted from a linear function. We also show that the Poynting flux normal to the magnetopause is linearly correlated with the directly driven part of the auroral electrojets in the ionosphere. This indicates that the energy entering the magnetosphere in the form of the Poynting flux is directly responsible for driving the electrojets. Furthermore, we argue that the polar cap potential saturation discussed in the literature is associated with the way solarwind plasma gets processed during the bow shock crossing and motion within the magnetosheath.

Abstract Intervals of enhanced magnetic fluctuations have been frequently observed in the solarwind. But it remains an open question as to whether these waves are generated at the Sun and then transported outward by the solarwind or generated locally in the interplanetary medium. Magnetic field and plasma measurements from the Wind spacecraft under slow solarwind conditions on 19 March 2005 demonstrate seven events of enhanced magnetic fluctuations at spacecraft‐frame frequencies somewhat above the proton cyclotron frequency and propagation approximately parallel or antiparallel to the background magnetic field B o. The proton velocity distributions during these events are characterized by two components: a more dense, slower core and a less dense, faster beam. Observed plasma parameters are used in a kinetic linear dispersion equation analysis for electromagnetic fluctuations at k x B o = 0; for two events the most unstable mode is the Alfvén‐cyclotron instability driven by a proton component temperature anisotropy T⊥/T|| > 1 (where the subscripts denote directions relative to B o), and for three events the most unstable mode is the right‐hand polarized magnetosonic instability driven primarily by ion component relative flows. Thus, both types of ion anisotropies and both types of instabilities are likely to be local sources of these enhanced fluctuation events in the solarwind.

The Earth is a planet with a dipolar magnetic field which is agitated by a magnetized plasma wind streaming from the Sun. The magnetic field shields the Earth's surface from penetrating high energy solarwind particles, as well as interstellar cosmic rays. The magnetic dipole has reversed sign some hundreds of times over the last 400 million years. These polarity reversals correspond to drastic breakdowns of the dynamo action. The question arises what the consequences for the Earth's atmosphere, climate, and, in particular, biosphere are. It is shown by kinematic estimates and three-dimensional plasma-neutral gas simulations that the solarwind can induce very fast a magnetic field in the previously completely unmagnetized Earth's ionosphere that is strong enough to protect Earth from cosmic radiations comparable to the case of an intact magnetic dynamo.

This report provides key information concerning the German experience with integrating of 25 gigawatts of wind and 7 gigawatts of solar power capacity and mitigating its impacts on the electric power system. The report has been prepared based on information provided by the Amprion GmbH and 50Hertz Transmission GmbH managers and engineers to the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory representatives during their visit to Germany in October 2009. The trip and this report have been sponsored by the BPA Technology Innovation office. Learning from the German experience could help the Bonneville Power Administration engineers to compare and evaluate potential new solutions for managing higher penetrations of wind energy resources in their control area. A broader dissemination of this experience will benefit wind and solar resource integration efforts in the United States.

The coupling of Jupiter's magnetosphere and ionosphere plays a vital role in creating its auroral emissions. The strength of these emissions is dependent on the difference in speed of the rotational flows within Jupiter's high-latitude thermosphere and the planet's magnetodisc. Using an azimuthally symmetric global circulation model, we have simulated how upstream solarwind conditions affect the energy and direction of atmospheric flows. In order to simulate the effect of a varying dynamic pressure in the upstream solarwind, we calculated three magnetic field profiles representing compressed, averaged and expanded `middle' magnetospheres. These profiles were then used to solve for the angular velocity of plasma in the magnetosphere. This angular velocity determines the strength of currents flowing between the ionosphere and magnetosphere. We examine the influence of variability in this current system upon the global winds and energy inputs within the Jovian thermosphere. We find that the power dissipated by...

A statistical relationship between magnetic reconnection, current sheets and intermittent turbulence in the solarwind is reported for the first time using in-situ measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. We identify intermittency as non-Gaussian fluctuations in increments of the magnetic field vector, $\\mathbf{B}$, that are spatially and temporally non-uniform. The reconnection events and current sheets are found to be concentrated in intervals of intermittent turbulence, identified using the partial variance of increments method: within the most non-Gaussian 1% of fluctuations in $\\mathbf{B}$, we find 87%-92% of reconnection exhausts and $\\sim$9% of current sheets. Also, the likelihood that an identified current sheet will also correspond to a reconnection exhaust increases dramatically as the least intermittent fluctuations are removed from the dataset. Hence, the turbulent solarwind contains a hierarchy of intermittent magnetic field structures that are increasingly linked to current sheets, which ...

This report provides key information concerning the German experience with integrating of 25 gigawatts of wind and 7 gigawatts of solar power capacity and mitigating its impacts on the electric power system. The report has been prepared based on information provided by the Amprion GmbH and 50Hertz Transmission GmbH managers and engineers to the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory representatives during their visit to Germany in October 2009. The trip and this report have been sponsored by the BPA Technology Innovation office. Learning from the German experience could help the Bonneville Power Administration engineers to compare and evaluate potential new solutions for managing higher penetrations of wind energy resources in their control area. A broader dissemination of this experience will benefit wind and solar resource integration efforts in the United States.

We have investigated the effect of key solarwind driving parameters on solarwind- magnetosphere coupling efficiency during sheath and magnetic cloud driven storms. The particular focus of the study was on the coupling efficiency dependence with Alfven Mach number (MA). The efficiency has been estimated using the dawn-dusk component of the interplanetary electric field (EY), Newell and Borovsky functions as a proxy for the energy inflow and the polar cap potential (PCN), auroral electrojet (AE) and SYM-H indices as the measure of the energy output. We have also performed a time delay analysis between the input parameters and the geomagnetic indices. We demonstrate that the PCN index distinctively shows both a MA dependent saturation and a MA-independent saturation, pointing to the existence of at least two underlying physical mechanisms for the saturation of the index. By contrast, we show that the AE index saturates, but that the saturation of this index is independent of the solarwind MA. Finally we find that the SYM-H index does not seem to saturate and that the absence of saturation is independent of the MA regime.

Governments at the state (and to a lesser extent, local) level in the United States have adopted an array of policies to promote wind and other types of 'green' energy, including solar, geothermal, low-impact hydropower, and certain forms of biomass. However, because of different regulatory environments, energy resource endowments, political interests, and other factors, there is considerable variation among the states in their green power policies. This paper analyzes the contribution to wind power development of several state-level policies (renewable portfolio standards (RPS), fuel generation disclosure rules, mandatory green power options, and public benefits funds), along with retail choice (RET) facilitated by electricity restructuring. The empirical results support existing anecdotal and case studies in finding a positive relationship between RPS and wind power development. We also found that requiring electricity suppliers to provide green power options to customers is positively related to development of wind energy, while there is a negative relationship between wind energy development and RET (i.e., allowing retail customers to choose their electricity source)

We investigate Venus Express (VEX) observations of magnetic field fluctuations performed systematically in the solarwind at 0.72 Astronomical Units (AU), between 2007 and 2009, during the deep minimum of the solar cycle 24. The Power Spectral Densities (PSD) of the magnetic field components have been computed for the time intervals that satisfy data integrity criteria and have been grouped according to the type of wind, fast and slow defined for speeds larger and respectively smaller than 450 km/s. The PSDs show higher levels of power for the fast than for the slow wind. The spectral slopes estimated for all PSDs in the frequency range 0.005-0.1 Hz exhibit a normal distribution. The average value of the trace of the spectral matrix is -1.60 for fast solarwind and -1.65 for slow wind. Compared to the corresponding average slopes at 1 AU, the PSDs are shallower at 0.72 AU for slow wind conditions suggesting a steepening of the solarwind spectra between Venus and Earth. No significant time variation trend is ...

In this paper a study on the response of geomagnetic field characteristics to the solarwind variation during three solar cycles (SC 21, SC 22, SC 23) have been conducted in a long term scale. The difference in the response of two different latitudinal characteristic indices has been investigated. For the purpose we have considered the high latitude index AE and the mid-latitude aa index and both gives the knowledge about the perturbations in the geomagnetic field conditions. Eventually we can infer the idea about the ionospheric current system changes in response to the solarwind conditions. The variation found in the AE and aa indices have been found to follow a 11 year cycle as similar to the sunspot variation. Also the correlation between the annual means of the solarwind parameters velocity V, magnetic filed B and the composite parameters BV and BV ^{2 } have been calculated . A difference was found between the correlations obtained for the AE and aa indices. We could also see that the difference in correlation follows a cyclic pattern i.e. the large difference is found during the solar maxima while a small difference is observed during the minima.

Full Text Available Renewable energy has become a crucial element for the business environment as the need for new energy resources and the degree of climate change are increasing. As developed economies strive towards greater progress, sustainable business models are of the essence in order to maintain a balance between the triple bottom line: people, planet and profit. In recent years, European Union countries have installed important capacities of renewable energy, especially wind and solar energy to achieve this purpose. The objective of this article is to make a comparative study between the current sustainable business models implemented in companies that are active in the wind and solar energy sector in Romania. Both sectors underwent tremendous changes in the last two years due to changing support schemes which have had a significant influence on the mechanism of the renewable energy market, as well as on its development. Using the classical Delphi method, based on questionnaires and interviews with experts in the fields of wind and solar energy, this paper offers an overview of the sustainable business models of wind and solar energy companies, both sectors opting for the alternative of selling electricity to trading companies as a main source of revenue until 2013 and as the main future trend until 2020. Furthermore, the participating wind energy companies noted a pessimistic outlook of future investments due to legal instability that made them to reduce their projects in comparison to PV investments, which are expected to continue. The subject of the article is of interest to scientific literature because sustainable business models in wind and photovoltaic energy have been scarcely researched in previous articles and are essential in understanding the activity of the companies in these two fields of renewable energy.

The solarwind was originally envisioned using a simple dipolar corona/polar coronal hole sources picture, but modern observations and models, together with the recent unusual solar cycle minimum, have demonstrated the limitations of this picture. The solar surface fields in both polar and low-to-mid-latitude active region zones routinely produce coronal magnetic fields and related solarwind sources much more complex than a dipole. This makes low-to-mid latitude coronal holes and their associated streamer boundaries major contributors to what is observed in the ecliptic and affects the Earth. In this paper we use magnetogram-based coronal field models to describe the conditions that prevailed in the corona from the decline of cycle 23 into the rising phase of cycle 24. The results emphasize the need for adopting new views of what is 'typical' solarwind, even when the Sun is relatively inactive.

Full Text Available The solarwind was originally envisioned using a simple dipolar corona/polar coronal hole sources picture, but modern observations and models, together with the recent unusual solar cycle minimum, have demonstrated the limitations of this picture. The solar surface fields in both polar and low-to-mid-latitude active region zones routinely produce coronal magnetic fields and related solarwind sources much more complex than a dipole. This makes low-to-mid latitude coronal holes and their associated streamer boundaries major contributors to what is observed in the ecliptic and affects the Earth. In this paper we use magnetogram-based coronal field models to describe the conditions that prevailed in the corona from the decline of cycle 23 into the rising phase of cycle 24. The results emphasize the need for adopting new views of what is ‘typical’ solarwind, even when the Sun is relatively inactive.

The electric solarwind sail (E-sail) is a novel, efficient propellantless propulsion concept which utilises the natural solarwind for spacecraft propulsion with the help of long centrifugally stretched charged tethers. The E-sail requires auxiliary propulsion applied to the tips of the main tethers for creating the initial angular momentum and possibly for modifying the spinrate later during flight to counteract the orbital Coriolis effect and possibly for mission specific reasons. We introduce the possibility of implementing the required auxiliary propulsion by small photonic blades (small radiation pressure solar sails). The blades would be stretched centrifugally. We look into two concepts, one with and one without auxiliary tethers. The use of photonic blades has the benefit of providing sufficient spin modification capability for any E-sail mission while keeping the technology fully propellantless. We conclude that the photonic blades appear to be a feasible and attractive solution to E-sail spinrate c...

We investigate the characteristics and the sources of the slow ( {global coronal structure, including the frequent presence of low-latitude active regions in 2006 - 2007, long-lived low- and mid-latitude coronal holes in 2006 - mid-2008 and mostly the quiet Sun in 2009. We examined Carrington rotation averages of selected solar plasma, charge state, and compositional parameters and distributions of these parameters related to the quiet Sun, active region Sun, and the coronal hole Sun. While some of the investigated parameters (e.g. speed, the C+6/C+4 and He/H ratios) show clear variations over our study period and with solarwind source type, some (Fe/O) exhibit very little changes. Our results highlight the difficulty of distinguishing between the slow solarwind sources based on the inspection of solarwind conditions.

Full Text Available Observations by Ulysses during its second out-of-ecliptic orbit have shown that near the solar activity maximum the solarwind appears as a highly variable flow at all heliolatitudes. In the present study Ulysses data from polar latitudes are compared to contemporary ACE data in the ecliptic plane to search for the presence of latitudinal effects in the large-scale structure of the solarwind velocity. The investigated period roughly covers the Sun's magnetic polarity reversal. The Ulysses-ACE comparison is performed through a multi-scale statistical analysis of the velocity fluctuations at scales from 1 to 64 days. The results indicate that, from a statistical point of view, the character of the wind velocity structure does not appear to change remarkably with latitude. It is likely that this result is characteristic of the particular phase of the solar magnetic cycle.

for improved forecasts over very short lead times, from a few minutes up to a few hours, because these forecasts, when generated with traditional approaches, are characterized by large uncertainty. In this thesis, this issue is considered from a statistical perspective, with time series models. The primary...... of more renewable energy into power systems since these systems are subjected to maintain a strict balance between electricity consumption and production, at any time. For this purpose, wind power forecasts offer an essential support to power system operators. In particular, there is a growing demand...... of high and low variability. They also yield substantial gains in probabilistic forecast accuracy for lead times of a few minutes. However, these models only integrate historical and local measurements of wind power and thus have a limited ability for notifying regime changes for larger lead times...

It is well known that there are good relations of coronal hole (CH) parameters such as the size, location, and magnetic field strength to the solarwind conditions and the geomagnetic storms. Especially in the minimum phase of solar cycle, CHs in mid- or low-latitude are one of major drivers for geomagnetic storms, since they form corotating interaction regions (CIRs). By adopting the method of Vrsnak et al. (2007), the Space Weather Research Center (SWRC) in Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) has done daily forecast of solarwind speed and Dst index from 2010. Through years of experience, we realize that the geomagnetic storms caused by CHs have different characteristics from those by CMEs. Thus, we statistically analyze the characteristics and causality of the geomagnetic storms by the CHs rather than the CMEs with dataset obtained during the solar activity was very low. For this, we examine the CH properties, solarwind parameters as well as geomagnetic storm indices. As the first result, we show the different trends of the solarwind parameters and geomagnetic indices depending on the degree of solar activity represented by CH (quiet) or sunspot number (SSN) in the active region (active) and then we evaluate our forecasts using CH information and suggest several ideas to improve forecasting capability.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — WSA-Enlil is a large-scale, physics-based prediction model of the heliosphere, used by the Space Weather Forecast Office to provide 1-4 day advance warning of solar...

Winds were strong enough to cause about a half a centimeter (.19 inch) of motion of a solar panel on NASA's Phoenix Mars lander when the lander's Surface Stereo Imager took this picture on Aug. 31, 2008, during the 96th Martian day since landing. The lander's telltale wind gauge has been indicating wind speeds of about 4 meters per second (9 miles per hour) during late mornings at the site. These conditions were anticipated and the wind is not expected to do any harm to the lander. The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

Winds were strong enough to cause about a half a centimeter (.19 inch) of motion of a solar panel on NASA's Phoenix Mars lander when the lander's Surface Stereo Imager took this picture on Aug. 31, 2008, during the 96th Martian day since landing. The lander's telltale wind gauge has been indicating wind speeds of about 4 meters per second (9 miles per hour) during late mornings at the site. These conditions were anticipated and the wind is not expected to do any harm to the lander. The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

Full Text Available Magnetohydrodynamic compressive fluctuations of the interplanetary plasma in the region from 0.3 to 1 AU have been characterized in terms of their polytropic index. Following Chandrasekhar's approach to polytropic fluids, this index has been determined through a fit of the observed variations of density and temperature. At least three different classes of fluctuations have been identified: (1 variations at constant thermal pressure, in low-speed solarwind and without a significant dependence on distance, (2 adiabatic variations, mainly close to 1 AU and without a relevant dependence on wind speed, and (3 variations at nearly constant density, in fast wind close to 0.3 AU. Variations at constant thermal pressure are probably a subset of the ensemble of total-pressure balanced structures, corresponding to cases in which the magnetic field magnitude does not vary appreciably throughout the structure. In this case the pressure equilibrium has to be assured by its thermal component only. The variations may be related to small flow-tubes with approximately the same magnetic-field intensity, convected by the wind in conditions of pressure equilibrium. This feature is mainly observed in low-velocity solarwind, in agreement with the magnetic topology (small open flow-tubes emerging through an ensemble of closed structures expected for the source region of slow wind. Variations of adiabatic type may be related to magnetosonic waves excited by pressure imbalances between contiguous flow-tubes. Such imbalances are probably built up by interactions between wind flows with different speeds in the spiral geometry induced by the solar rotation. This may account for the fact that they are mainly found at a large distance from the sun. Temperature variations at almost constant density are mostly found in fast flows close to the sun. These are the solarwind regions with the best examples of incompressible behaviour. They are characterized by very stable

The first observed connection between kinetic instabilities driven by proton temperature anisotropy and estimated energy cascade rates in the turbulent solarwind is reported using measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. We find enhanced cascade rates are concentrated along the boundaries of the (β∥, T⊥/T∥) plane, which includes regions theoretically unstable to the mirror and firehose instabilities. A strong correlation is observed between the estimated cascade rate and kinetic effects such as temperature anisotropy and plasma heating, resulting in protons 5-6 times hotter and 70%-90% more anisotropic than under typical isotropic plasma conditions. These results offer new insights into kinetic processes in a turbulent regime.

The first observed connection between kinetic instabilities driven by proton temperature anisotropy and estimated energy cascade rates in the turbulent solarwind is reported using measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. We find enhanced cascade rates are concentrated along the boundaries of the (β‖,T⊥/T‖)-plane, which includes regions theoretically unstable to the mirror and firehose instabilities. A strong correlation is observed between the estimated cascade rates and kinetic effects such as temperature anisotropy and plasma heating, resulting in protons 5-6 times hotter and 70-90% more anisotropic than under typical isotropic plasma conditions. These results offer new insights into kinetic processes in a turbulent regime.

The first observed connection between kinetic instabilities driven by proton temperature anisotropy and estimated energy cascade rates in the turbulent solarwind is reported using measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. We find enhanced cascade rates are concentrated along the boundaries of the ($\\beta_{\\parallel}$, $T_{\\perp}/T_{\\parallel}$)-plane, which includes regions theoretically unstable to the mirror and firehose instabilities. A strong correlation is observed between the estimated cascade rate and kinetic effects such as temperature anisotropy and plasma heating, resulting in protons 5-6 times hotter and 70-90% more anisotropic than under typical isotropic plasma conditions. These results offer new insights into kinetic processes in a turbulent regime.

Solar and wind energy systems are considered as promising power generating sources due to its availability and topological advantages in local power generations. However, a drawback, common to solar and wind options, is their unpredictable nature and dependence on weather changes, both of these energy systems would have to be oversized to make them completely reliable. Fortunately, the problems caused by variable nature of these resources can be partially overcome by integrating these two resources in a proper combination to form a hybrid system. However, with the increased complexity in comparison with single energy systems, optimum design of hybrid system becomes more complicated. In order to efficiently and economically utilize the renewable energy resources, one optimal sizing method is necessary. This thesis developed an optimal sizing method to find the global optimum configuration of stand-alone hybrid (both solar-wind and solar-wind-diesel) power generation systems. By using Genetic Algorithm (GA), the optimal sizing method was developed to calculate the system optimum configuration which offers to guarantee the lowest investment with full use of the PV array, wind turbine and battery bank. For the hybrid solar-wind system, the optimal sizing method is developed based on the Loss of Power Supply Probability (LPSP) and the Annualized Cost of System (ACS) concepts. The optimization procedure aims to find the configuration that yields the best compromise between the two considered objectives: LPSP and ACS. The decision variables, which need to be optimized in the optimization process, are the PV module capacity, wind turbine capacity, battery capacity, PV module slope angle and wind turbine installation height. For the hybrid solar-wind-diesel system, minimization of the system cost is achieved not only by selecting an appropriate system configuration, but also by finding a suitable control strategy (starting and stopping point) of the diesel generator. The

Observational and theoretical studies of turbulent fluctuations in space plasma have been ongoing for many years. There are still many unanswered questions about the origin and evolution of the fluctuations in the heliosphere. This work pursues the subject and uses Voyage 1 and 2, and ISEE-3 measurements to study the evolution of solar-wind plasma and the magnetic field between heliocentric distances of 1 and 20 AU and to more than 25/sup 0/ in latitude above the ecliptic plane. Parker's 1958 solar-wind model is found to be accurate to within 5% in predicting the behavior of long-term (solar rotation) averages in the interplanetary magnetic field when time dependencies in the bulk plasma speed are included. No evidence was found of flux loss in the outer heliosphere as recently reported in the literature. Methods of turbulence analysis and are used to organize the observations and several predictions and expectations of ideal MHD turbulence theory are tested. Spectral indices expected for inertial-range turbulence are present in much of the data analyzed, and this inertial range is found in increasingly larger spatial scales with increasing radial distance from the sun. Evidence for inverse cascade of magnetic helicity is observed in selected intervals, although this was not found to be true in general in the solarwind.

The electric solarwind sail (E-sail) is a space propulsion concept that uses the natural solarwind dynamic pressure for producing spacecraft thrust. In its baseline form, the E-sail consists of a number of long, thin, conducting, and centrifugally stretched tethers, which are kept in a high positive potential by an onboard electron gun. The concept gains its efficiency from the fact that the effective sail area, i.e., the potential structure of the tethers, can be millions of times larger than the physical area of the thin tethers wires, which offsets the fact that the dynamic pressure of the solarwind is very weak. Indeed, according to the most recent published estimates, an E-sail of 1 N thrust and 100 kg mass could be built in the rather near future, providing a revolutionary level of propulsive performance (specific acceleration) for travel in the solar system. Here we give a review of the ongoing technical development work of the E-sail, covering tether construction, overall mechanical design alternatives, guidance and navigation strategies, and dynamical and orbital simulations.

We analyze a large, complex equatorial coronal hole (ECH) and its immediate surroundings with a focus on the roots of the fast solarwind. We start by demonstrating that our ECH is indeed a source of the fast solarwind at 1AU by examining in situ plasma measurements in conjunction with recently developed measures of magnetic conditions of the photosphere, inner heliosphere and the mapping of the solarwind source region. We focus the bulk of our analysis on interpreting the thermal and spatial dependence of the non-thermal line widths in the ECH as measured by SOHO/SUMER by placing the measurements in context with recent studies of ubiquitous Alfven waves in the solar atmosphere and line profile asymmetries (indicative of episodic heating and mass loading of the coronal plasma) that originate in the strong, unipolar magnetic flux concentrations that comprise the supergranular network. The results presented in this paper are consistent with a picture where a significant portion of the energy responsible for t...

We investigate the Sun-Earth dynamics of a set of eight well observed solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) using data from the STEREO spacecraft. We seek to quantify the extent to which momentum coupling between these CMEs and the ambient solarwind (i.e., the aerodynamic drag) influences their dynamics. To this end, we use results from a 3D flux rope model fit to the CME data. We find that solarwind aerodynamic drag adequately accounts for the dynamics of the fastest CME in our sample. For the relatively slower CMEs, we find that drag-based models initiated below heliocentric distances ranging from 15 to 50 $R_{\\odot}$ cannot account for the observed CME trajectories. This is at variance with the general perception that the dynamics of slow CMEs are influenced primarily by solarwind drag from a few $R_{\\odot}$ onwards. Several slow CMEs propagate at roughly constant speeds above 15--50 $R_{\\odot}$. Drag-based models initiated above these heights therefore require negligible aerodynamic drag to explain their...

Year 2009 was the last year of a long and pronounced solar activity minimum. In this year the solarwind in the inner heliosphere was for 90% of the time slow (< 450 km s{sup -1}) and with a weaker magnetic field strength compared to the previous solar minimum 1995-1996. We choose this year to present the results of a systematic search for small solarwind transients (STs) observed by the STEREO-Ahead (ST-A) probe. The data are from the PLASTIC and IMPACT instrument suites. By 'small' we mean a duration from {approx}1 to 12 hours. The parameters we search for to identify STs are (i) the total field strength, (ii) the rotation of the magnetic field vector, (iii) its smoothness, (iv) proton temperature, (v) proton beta, and (vi) Alfven Mach number. We find 45 examples. The STs have an average duration of {approx}4 hours. Ensemble averages of key quantities are: (i) maximum B = 7.01 nT; (ii) proton {beta}= 0.18; (iii) proton thermal speed = 20.8 km s{sup -1}; and (iv) Alfven Mach number = 6.13. No distinctive feature is found in the pitch angle distributions of suprathermal electrons. Our statistical results are compared with those of STs observed near Earth by Wind during 2009.

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) study of 20% Wind Energy by 2030 was conducted to consider the benefits, challenges, and costs associated with sourcing 20% of U.S. energy consumption from wind power by 2030. This study found that with proactive measures, no insurmountable barriers were identified to meet the 20% goal. Following this study, DOE and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conducted two more studies: the Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study (EWITS) covering the eastern portion of the U.S., and the Western Wind and Solar Integration Study (WWSIS) covering the western portion of the United States. The WWSIS was conducted by NREL and research partner General Electric (GE) in order to provide insight into the costs, technical or physical barriers, and operational impacts caused by the variability and uncertainty of wind, photovoltaic, and concentrated solar power when employed to serve up to 35% of the load energy in the WestConnect region (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming). WestConnect is composed of several utility companies working collaboratively to assess stakeholder and market needs to and develop cost-effective improvements to the western wholesale electricity market. Participants include the Arizona Public Service, El Paso Electric Company, NV Energy, Public Service of New Mexico, Salt River Project, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Cooperative, Tucson Electric Power, Xcel Energy and the Western Area Power Administration.

Models for the origin of the slow solarwind must account for two seemingly contradictory observations: The slow wind has the composition of the closed-field corona, implying that it originates from the continuous opening and closing of flux at the boundary between open and closed field. On the other hand, the slow wind has large angular width, up to approximately 60 degrees, suggesting that its source extends far from the open-closed boundary. We propose a model that can explain both observations. The key idea is that the source of the slow wind at the Sun is a network of narrow (possibly singular) open-field corridors that map to a web of separatrices and quasi-separatrix layers in the heliosphere. We compute analytically the topology of an open-field corridor and show that it produces a quasi-separatrix layer in the heliosphere that extends to angles far front the heliospheric current sheet. We then use an MHD code and MIDI/SOHO observations of the photospheric magnetic field to calculate numerically, with high spatial resolution, the quasi-steady solarwind and magnetic field for a time period preceding the August 1, 2008 total solar eclipse. Our numerical results imply that, at least for this time period, a web of separatrices (which we term an S-web) forms with sufficient density and extent in the heliosphere to account for the observed properties of the slow wind. We discuss the implications of our S-web model for the structure and dynamics of the corona and heliosphere, and propose further tests of the model.

The nature of solarwind turbulence in the dissipation range at scales much smaller than the large MHD scales remains under debate. Here a two-dimensional model based on the hybrid code abbreviated as A.I.K.E.F. is presented, which treats massive ions as particles obeying the kinetic Vlasov equation and massless electrons as a neutralizing fluid. Up to a certain wavenumber in the MHD regime, the numerical system is initialized by assuming a superposition of isotropic Alfv\\'en waves with amplitudes that follow the empirically confirmed spectral law of Kolmogorov. Then turbulence develops and energy cascades into the dispersive spectral range, where also dissipative effects occur. Under typical solarwind conditions, weak turbulence develops as a superposition of normal modes in the kinetic regime. Spectral analysis in the direction parallel to the background magnetic field reveals a cascade of left-handed Alfv\\'en/ion-cyclotron waves up to wave vectors where their resonant absorption sets in, as well as a cont...

We investigate the characteristics and the sources of the slow (< 450 km/s) solarwind during the four years (2006-2009) of low solar activity between Solar Cycles 23 and 24. We use a comprehensive set of in-situ observations in the near-Earth solarwind (Wind and ACE) and remove the periods when large-scale interplanetary coronal mass ejections were present. The investigated period features significant variations in the global coronal structure, including the frequent presence of low-latitude active regions in 2006-2007, long-lived low- and mid-latitude coronal holes in 2006 - mid-2008 and mostly the quiet Sun in 2009. We examine both Carrington Rotation averages of selected solar plasma, charge state and compositional parameters and distributions of these parameters related to Quiet Sun, Active Region Sun and the Coronal Hole Sun. While some of the investigated parameters (e.g., speed, the C^{+6}/C^{+4} and He/H ratio) show clear variations over our study period and with solarwind source type, some (Fe/...

Efforts have been made to extract the physical meaning of each term in our prediction model of the Dst index using the solarwind as the only input. The work has been published Journal of Geophysical Research (Temerin and Li, 21002). We found different terms in the model representing different current in the magnetospheric system and each current has different rise and decay times, with the symmetric ring current the slowest, then the partial ring current, then the tail current. We also have been trying to understand the physical meaning of the diffusion coefficient used in our prediction model of relativistic electron fluxes at geostationary orbit. The model reproduced the observations of MeV electron flux variations well, the diffusion coefficient had be assumed only die to local magnetic field fluctuations, leading to its 10th power dependence on the L. We have studied the theoretical derivation of the diffusion coefficient and we believe that the effect electric field fluctuations at smaller L could become more significant. We have expanded our previous radiation belt electron prediction model, which predicted MeV electron geosynchronous orbit based on solarwind measurements, to predict MeV electrons inside geosynchronous orbit. The model results are compared with measurements from Polar/CEPPAD. Prediction efficiencies of 0.56 and 0.54, respectively, at L=6 and L=4, have been achieved over the entire year of 1998. This work wa reported at 2003 Fall AGU and has been accepted for publication in Space Weather (Barker et al., 2005). We also have used simultaneous measurements of the upstream solarwind and of energetic electrons at geosynchronous orbit to analyze the response of electrons over a very wide energy range, 50 keV-6MeV, to solarwind variations. Enhancements of energetic electron fluxes over this whole energy range are modulated by the solarwind speed and the polarity of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). The solarwind speed seems to be a

In July 2009, Major Economies Forum leaders met to prepare for the COP 15 Copenhagen Conference that took place later that year. At this occasion the Major Economies Forum Global Partnership f or low carbon and climate-friendly technology was founded and Technology Action Plans (TAPs) for ten key low-carbon technologies were drafted. At that juncture Denmark, Germany and Spain took on the responsibility for drafting TAPs for Solar and Wind Energy Technologies. The TAPs were then consolidated and presented at COP 15 that would later take place in December in Copenhagen. Since then, countries that led the development of the Action Plans have started their implementation. During a first Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) in July 2010 in Washington on the invitation of Steven Chu, US Secretary of Energy, several initiatives were launched. Denmark, Germany and Spain took the lead in the implementation of the TAPs for Solar and Wind Technologies and initiated the Multilateral Working Group on Solar and Wind Energy Technologies (MWGSW). Several countries joined the working group in Washington and afterwards. In two international workshops in Bonn (June 2010) and Madrid (November 2010) and in meetings during the first CEM in Washington (July 2010) and the second CEM in Abu Dhabi (April 2011) the Multilateral Working Group made substantial progress in the two initial fields of action: (1) the Development of a Global Solar and Wind Atlas; and (2) the Development of a Long-term Strategy on Joint Capacity Building. Discussion papers on the respective topics were elaborated involving the Working Group's member countries as well as various international institutions. This led to concrete proposals for several pilot activities in both fields of action. After further specifying key elements of the suggested projects in two expert workshops in spring 2011, the Multilateral Working Group convened for a third international workshop in Copenhagen, Denmark, to discuss the project

The compositions of the Earth's crust and mantle, and those of the Moon and Mars, are relatively well known both isotopically and elementally. The same is true of our knowledge of the asteroid belt composition, based on meteorite analyses. Remote measurements of Venus, the Jovian atmosphere, and the outer planet moons, have provided some estimates of their compositions. The Sun constitutes a large majority, > 99%, of all the matter in the solar system. The elemental composition of the photosphere, the visible 'surface' of the Sun, is constrained by absorption lines produced by particles above the surface. Abundances for many elements are reported to the {+-}10 or 20% accuracy level. However, the abundances of other important elements, such as neon, cannot be determined in this way due to a relative lack of atomic states at low excitation energies. Additionally and most importantly, the isotopic composition of the Sun cannot be determined astronomically except for a few species which form molecules above sunspots, and estimates derived from these sources lack the accuracy desired for comparison with meteoritic and planetary surface samples measured on the Earth. The solarwind spreads a sample of solar particles throughout the heliosphere, though the sample is very rarified: collecting a nanogram of oxygen, the third most abundant element, in a square centimeter cross section at the Earth's distance from the Sun takes five years. Nevertheless, foil collectors exposed to the solarwind for periods of hours on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo missions were used to determine the helium and neon solar-wind compositions sufficiently to show that the Earth's atmospheric neon was significantly evolved relative to the Sun. Spacecraft instruments developed subsequently have provided many insights into the composition of the solarwind, mostly in terms of elemental composition. These instruments have the advantage of observing a number of

We provide observational evidence for the existence of large-scale cylindrical (or conic-like) current sheets (CCSs) at high heliolatitudes. Long-lived CCSs were detected by Ulysses during its passages over the South Solar Pole in 1994 and 2007. The characteristic scale of these tornado-like structures is several times less than a typical width of coronal holes within which the CCSs are observed. CCS crossings are characterized by a dramatic decrease in the solarwind speed and plasma beta typical for predicted profiles of CCSs. Ulysses crossed the same CCS at different heliolatitudes at 2-3 au several times in 1994, as the CCS was declined from the rotation axis and corotated with the Sun. In 2007, a CCS was detected directly over the South Pole, and its structure was strongly highlighted by the interaction with comet McNaught. Restorations of solar coronal magnetic field lines reveal the occurrence of conic-like magnetic separators over the solar poles in both 1994 and 2007. Such separators exist only during solar minima. Interplanetary scintillation data analysis confirms the presence of long-lived low-speed regions surrounded by the typical polar high-speed solarwind in solar minima. Energetic particle flux enhancements up to several MeV/nuc are observed at edges of the CCSs. We built simple MHD models of a CCS to illustrate its key features. The CCSs may be formed as a result of nonaxiality of the solar rotation axis and magnetic axis, as predicted by the Fisk-Parker hybrid heliospheric magnetic field model in the modification of Burger and coworkers.

The fact that this electrified plasma speeds up to almost 3 million kilometres per hour as it leaves the Sun - twice as fast as originally predicted - has been known for years. The interpretation of how it happens is the real and surprising novelty: "The waves in the Sun's atmosphere are produced by vibrating solar magnetic field lines, which give solarwind particles a push just like an ocean wave gives a surfer a ride" said Dr John Kohl, principal investigator for the Ultraviolet Coronal Spectrometer (UVCS) - the instrument among the 12 aboard SOHO which gathered the data - and for the Spartan 201 mission. The outermost solar atmosphere, or corona, is only seen from Earth during a total eclipse of the Sun, when it appears as a shimmering, white veil surrounding the black lunar disc. The corona is an extremely tenuous, electrically charged gas, known as plasma, that flows throughout the solar system as the solarwind. The waves are formed by rapidly vibrating magnetic fields in the coronal plasma. They are called magneto - hydro - dynamic (MHD) waves and are believed to accelerate the solarwind. The solarwind is made up of electrons and ions, electrically charged atoms that have lost electrons. The electric charge of the solarwind particles forces them to travel along invisible lines of magnetic force in the corona. The particles spiral around the magnetic field lines as they rush into space. "The magnetic field acts like a violin string: when it's touched, it vibrates. When the Sun's magnetic field vibrates with a frequency equal to that of the particle spiraling around the magnetic field, it heats it up, producing a force that accelerates the particle upward and away from the Sun," says Dr. Ester Antonucci, an astronomer at the observatory of Turin, Italy, and co-investigator for SOHO's UVCS an instrument developed with considerable financial support by the Italian Space Agency, ASI. In a way this is similar to what happens if two people hold a string at

The initial acceleration of the nonspherically symmetric solarwind is discussed according to recent treatments via nonspherically symmetric and nonpolytropic MHD models. These studies give some physical quantities of the plasma outflow which the proposedSolar Probe mission could measure. For example, among the predictions of such two-dimensional models is that as one approaches the sun the spatially extended heating and temperature increase while as the polar axis is approached, the outflow speed increases, although the plasma density and pressure decrease. The sonic transition is closer to the Sun in streamlines closer to the solar rotation axis than it is for streamlines further away and closer to the ecliptic plane. Preliminary observations from the Ulysses spacecraft at several AU suggesting a latitudinal gradient of ~ 3.5 AU, are in agreement with such models. Thus, since most measurements of the solarwind parameters have taken place to this date on the ecliptic plane and at distances larger than >~ 100 r_solar, a comparison of the data of the Solar Probe mission with such theories shall be of considerable interest for a deeper understanding of the initial acceleration of the closer astrophysical outflow of the solarwind with profound implications as well for other more distant and similar cosmic phenomena.

The behavior of a number of solarwind, radiation belt, auroral and geomagnetic parameters is examined during the recent extended solar minimum and previous solar cycles, covering the period from January 1972 to July 2010. This period includes most of the solar minimum between Cycles 23 and 24, which was more extended than recent solar minima, with historically low values of most of these parameters in 2009. Solar rotational periodicities from S to 27 days were found from daily averages over 81 days for the parameters. There were very strong 9-day periodicities in many variables in 2005 -2008, triggered by recurring corotating high-speed streams (HSS). All rotational amplitudes were relatively large in the descending and early minimum phases of the solar cycle, when HSS are the predominant solarwind structures. There were minima in the amplitudes of all solar rotational periodicities near the end of each solar minimum, as well as at the start of the reversal of the solar magnetic field polarity at solar maximum (approx.1980, approx.1990, and approx. 2001) when the occurrence frequency of HSS is relatively low. Semiannual equinoctial periodicities, which were relatively strong in the 1995-1997 solar minimum, were found to be primarily the result of the changing amplitudes of the 13.5- and 27-day periodicities, where 13.5-day amplitudes were better correlated with heliospheric daily observations and 27-day amplitudes correlated better with Earth-based daily observations. The equinoctial rotational amplitudes of the Earth-based parameters were probably enhanced by a combination of the Russell-McPherron effect and a reduction in the solarwind-magnetosphere coupling efficiency during solstices. The rotational amplitudes were cross-correlated with each other, where the 27 -day amplitudes showed some of the weakest cross-correlations. The rotational amplitudes of the > 2 MeV radiation belt electron number fluxes were progressively weaker from 27- to 5-day periods

Full Text Available The plasma environment of Saturn's largest satellite Titan is known to be highly variable. Since Titan's orbit is located within the outer magnetosphere of Saturn, the moon can leave the region dominated by the magnetic field of its parent body in times of high solarwind dynamic pressure and interact with the thermalized magnetosheath plasma or even with the unshocked solarwind. By applying a three-dimensional hybrid simulation code (kinetic description of ions, fluid electrons, we study in real-time the transition that Titan's plasma environment undergoes when the moon leaves Saturn's magnetosphere and enters the supermagnetosonic solarwind. In the simulation, the transition between both plasma regimes is mimicked by a reversal of the magnetic field direction as well as a change in the composition and temperature of the impinging plasma flow. When the satellite enters the solarwind, the magnetic draping pattern in its vicinity is reconfigured due to reconnection, with the characteristic time scale of this process being determined by the convection of the field lines in the undisturbed plasma flow at the flanks of the interaction region. The build-up of a bow shock ahead of Titan takes place on a typical time scale of a few minutes as well. We also analyze the erosion of the newly formed shock front upstream of Titan that commences when the moon re-enters the submagnetosonic plasma regime of Saturn's magnetosphere. Although the model presented here is far from governing the full complexity of Titan's plasma interaction during a solarwind excursion, the simulation provides important insights into general plasma-physical processes associated with such a disruptive change of the upstream flow conditions.

Full Text Available The study of the interaction of the solarwind with magnetized and unmagnetized planets forms a central topic of space research. Focussing on planetary magnetosheaths, we review some major developments in this field. Magnetosheath structures depend crucially on the orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field, the solarwind Alfvén Mach number, the shape of the obstacle (axisymmetric/non-axisymmetric, etc., the boundary conditions at the magnetopause (low/high magnetic shear, and the degree of thermal anisotropy of the plasma. We illustrate the cases of Earth, Jupiter and Venus. The terrestrial magnetosphere is axisymmetric and has been probed in-situ by many spacecraft. Jupiter's magnetosphere is highly non-axisymmetric. Furthermore, we study magnetohydrodynamic effects in the Venus magnetosheath.

The SolarWind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument on New Horizons will measure the interaction between the solarwind and ions created by atmospheric loss from Pluto. These measurements provide a characterization of the total loss rate and allow us to examine the complex plasma interactions at Pluto for the first time. Constrained to fit within minimal resources, SWAP is optimized to make plasma-ion measurements at all rotation angles as the New Horizons spacecraft scans to image Pluto and Charon during the flyby. In order to meet these unique requirements, we combined a cylindrically symmetric retarding potential analyzer (RPA) with small deflectors, a top-hat analyzer, and a redundant/coincidence detection scheme. This configuration allows for highly sensitive measurements and a controllable energy passband at all scan angles of the spacecraft.

We review the main advantages and limitations of the kinetic exospheric and fluid models of the solarwind (SW). We discuss the hydrostatic model imagined by Chapman, the first supersonic hydrodynamic models published by Parker and the first generation subsonic kinetic model proposed by Chamberlain. It is shown that a correct estimation of the electric field as in the second generation kinetic exospheric models developed by Lemaire and Scherer, provides a supersonic expansion of the corona, reconciling the hydrodynamic and the kinetic approach. The third generation kinetic exospheric models considers kappa velocity distribution function (VDF) instead of a Maxwellian at the exobase and in addition they treat a non-monotonic variation of the electric potential with the radial distance; the fourth generation exospheric models include Coulomb collisions based on the Fokker--Planck collision term. Multi-fluid models of the solarwind provide a coarse grained description and reproduce with success the spatio-tempor...

Stochastic acceleration of particles under a pressure balance condition can accommodate the universal $p^{-5}$ spectra observed under many different conditions in the inner heliosphere. In this model, in order to avoid an infinite build up of particle pressure, a relationship between the momentum diffusion of particles and the adiabatic deceleration in the solarwind must exist. This constrains both the spatial and momentum diffusion coefficients and results in the $p^{-5}$ spectrum in the presence of adiabatic losses in the solarwind. However, this theory cannot explain the presence of such spectra beyond the termination shock, where adiabatic deceleration is negligible. To explain this apparent discrepancy, we include the effect of charge exchange losses, resulting in new forms of both the spatial and momentum diffusion coefficients that have not previously been considered. Assuming that the turbulence is of a large-scale compressible nature, we find that a balance between momentum diffusion and losses can...

Greater penetrations of variable renewable generation on some electric grids have resulted in increased levels of curtailment in recent years. Studies of renewable energy grid integration have found that curtailment levels may grow as the penetration of wind and solar energy generation increases....... This paper reviews international experience with curtailment of wind and solar energy on bulk power systems in recent years, with a focus on eleven countries in Europe, North America, and Asia. It examines levels of curtailment, the causes of curtailment, curtailment methods and use of market based dispatch......, as well as operational, institutional, and other changes that are being made to reduce renewable energy curtailment. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved....

Using available data from the literature, an outline is formulated for the major physical and chemical effects expected during solar-wind bombardment of the lunar regolith. In agreement with results of Auger and other analyses of the composition of lunar grain surfaces, this outline predicts that solar-wind sputtering will tend to clean exposed grain surfaces by ejecting material at velocities exceeding lunar escape velocity. Results are also discussed which show that Fe is partially reduced in the outer few 10 nm of grain surfaces and that this reduced Fe forms 10-nm-diameter metal spheres throughout the glass during agglutinate formation by micrometeorite impacts. These metal spheres give the agglutinates their distinctive optical and magnetic properties and are partially responsible for the decreasing albedo of the lunar surface with exposure age.

The role of compressible fluctuations in the energy cascade of fast solarwind turbulence is studied using a reduced form of an exact law derived recently for compressible isothermal magnetohydrodynamics and in situ observations from the THEMIS B/ARTEMIS P1 spacecraft. A statistical survey of the data revealed a turbulent energy cascade over a range of two decades of scales that is broader than the previous estimates made from an exact incompressible law. A term-by-term analysis of the compressible model reveals new insight into the role played by the compressible fluctuations in the energy cascade. The compressible fluctuations are shown to amplify by two to four times the turbulent cascade rate with respect to the incompressible model in ∼ 10 % of the analyzed samples. This new estimated cascade rate is shown to provide the adequate energy dissipation required to account for the local heating of the non-adiabatic solarwind.

The recent in-situ measurements of the plasma-neutral gas environment of comet Halley by the GIOTTO and VEGA spacecraft have confirmed the global theory of the comet-solarwind interaction. The ionopause, cometopause, and bow shock distances are the primary predictions of the model, although various momentum collisional cross-sections can also be estimated. With this greater confidence in the global model, the sharp Sunward intensity decrease in the spatial H2O+ profiles observed for comet Halley between 2.14 AU pre- and post-perihelion are interpreted as the cometopause boundary. This interpretation may then be used to determine the solarwind conditions local to the comet.

Full Text Available A short review of recent observations of solarwind fluctuations in the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD range of scales is presented. In recent years, the use of high time-resolution data on an extended interval of heliocentric distance has allowed significant advances in our knowledge of MHD fluctuations. We first focus on the origin and evolution of the Alfvénic-type fluctuations. The role of interplanetary sources and the influence of interactions with structures convected by the solarwind are examined. Then compressive fluctuations are investigated, with special attention being given to their nature and origin. Observations are discussed in the light of recent theories and models. Finally, predictions for MHD turbulence in polar regions of the heliosphere are highlighted.

The dust bursts discovered by the Ulysses dust sensor when approaching Jupiter in 1992 were later confirmed as collimated streams of high velocity (~200 km/s) charged (~5V) dust grains escaping from Jupiter and dominated by the interplanetary Magnetic field (IMF). With Cassini, a similar phenomenon was observed in Saturn. It was demonstrated that the Jovian dust streams are closely related to the solarwind compressed regions, either Corotating interaction regions (CIRs) or Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ¨Cto a minor extent-. Actually the dust streams seem ultimately to be generated by such events. This can be explained considering that dust grains are accelerated as they gain substantial energy while compressed at the forward and reverse shocks that bound or precede these solarwind regions.

Particle velocity distributions measured in the weakly collisional solarwind are frequently found to be non-Maxwellian, but how these non-Maxwellian distributions impact the physics of plasma turbulence in the solarwind remains unanswered. Using numerical solutions of the linear dispersion relation for a collisionless plasma with a bi-Maxwellian proton velocity distribution, we present a unified framework for the four proton temperature anisotropy instabilities, identifying the associated stable eigenmodes, highlighting the unstable region of wavevector space, and presenting the properties of the growing eigenfunctions. Based on physical intuition gained from this framework, we address how the proton temperature anisotropy impacts the nonlinear dynamics of the \\Alfvenic fluctuations underlying the dominant cascade of energy from large to small scales and how the fluctuations driven by proton temperature anisotropy instabilities interact nonlinearly with each other and with the fluctuations of the large-scal...

The shortage of freshwater resources has become a worldwide problem. China has a water shortage, although the total amount of water resources is the sixth in the world, the per capita water capacity is the 121th (a quarter of the world's per capita water capacity), and the United Nations considers China one of the poorest 13 countries in the world in terms of water. In order to increase the supply of fresh water, a realistic way is to make full use of China's long and narrow coastline for seawater desalination. This paper discusses a sea water desalination device, the device adopts distillation, uses the greenhouse effect principle and wind power heating principle, and the two-type start is used to solve the problem of vertical axis wind turbine self-starting. Thrust bearings are used to ensure the stability of the device, and to ensure absorbtion of wind energy and solar energy, and to collect evaporation of water to achieve desalination. The device can absorb solar and wind energy instead of input energy, so it can be used in ship, island and many kinds of environment. Due to the comprehensive utilization of wind power and solar power, the efficiency of the device is more than other passive sea water desalting plants, the initial investment and maintenance cost is lower than active sea water desalting plant. The main part of the device cannot only be used in offshore work, but can also be used in deep sea floating work, so the device can utilise deep sea energy. In order to prove the practicability of the device, the author has carried out theory of water production calculations. According to the principle of conservation of energy, the device ais bsorbing solar and wind power, except loose lost part which is used for water temperature rise and phase transition. Assume the inflow water temperature is 20 °C, outflow water temperature is 70 °C, the energy utilization is 60%, we can know that the water production quantity is 8 kg/ m2 per hour. Comparing with the

OMNI is an hourly resolution multi-source data set of near-Earth solarwind's magnetic field and plasma parameters spanning the period from November 1963 (IMP 1 launch) to today, and it is being updated regularly with new data. OMNI is widely used in the heliospheric community as is documented by the large number of acknowledgements in scientific papers. OMNI provides the IMF (magnitude and vector), flow velocity (magnitude and vector), flow pressure, proton density, alpha particle to proton density ratio, and several additional parameters including sunspot and geomagnetic indices and energetic proton fluxes from IMP and GOES. Spacecraft data used for compiling the OMNI solarwind reference include IMP-8, ACE, Wind, ISEE-3, and Geotail. The data from ISEE-3, Wind, and ACE were time-shifted because they are about an hour upstream of the Earth's magnetosphere. Extensive quality control and cross- comparisons of overlapping data sets were made in creating OMNI. This presentation will describe the OMNI data set and highlight its wide use in the space science community. We will also present some of the many capabilities of the OMNIweb interface (http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/ow.html) that provides access to the entire OMNI data set. OMNIWeb allows users to generate plots vs. time, to create scatter plots of any two OMNI parameters, to filter with user-specified parameter range criteria, to list and download OMNI parameters, to generate distributions of OMNI parameter values, and to browse and retrieve a static (but periodically updated) daily-resolution IMF polarity plot covering the entire OMNI time span. The Omni data set represents a thorough description of various characteristics of near-Earth solarwind magnetic field and plasma, which could be used as a basis for that space environment's standard.

High time resolution magnetic field measurements (1 vector/s) at radial distances out to 5.3 AU and heliographic latitudes from 0(deg) to > 35(deg) S reveal the presence of solitary pulses lasting tens of seconds in which the field magnitude approaches or reaches zero. The properties of these nulls, their spatial distribution and relation to solarwind structures and to similar-apppearing interplanetary and magnetospheric impulses will be discussed.

Electron scale solarwind turbulence has attracted great interest in recent years. Clear evidences have been given from the Cluster data that turbulence is not fully dissipated near the proton scale but continues cascading down to the electron scales. However, the scaling of the energy spectra as well as the nature of the plasma modes involved at those small scales are still not fully determined. Here we survey 10 years of the Cluster search-coil magnetometer (SCM) waveforms measured in the s...

The recent spacecraft encounters with comets Giacobini-Zinner and Halley have led to an enormous increase in our knowledge of comets, including their dust, neutral gas, plasma, and magnetic field environments. The latter has in turn led to better understanding of the nature of the solarwind interaction with the well developed atmosphere of a comet. The post-encounter understanding of this interaction is reviewed, underscoring the differences with pre-encounter reasoning. The problems outstanding in this area are emphasized.

Full Text Available There are two different winter anomalies. A small one that appears in connection with ionization at relatively low latitudes in the bottom of the D-region of the ionosphere. There, the electron densities in the winter happen to be less than should be expected. On the other hand, the classic winter anomaly is present when in the winter the upper D-region, again at relatively low latitudes, has more ionization than should be expected. Both these effects are due to the slant compression of the geomagnetic field produced by the solarwind in the winter season (which is, of course, the summer season when reference is made to events in the other hemisphere. It is shown that the small winter anomaly is a consequence of a hemispheric imbalance in the flux of galactic cosmic rays determined by the obliquely distorted geomagnetic field. It is shown that the standard winter anomaly can be ascribed to the influx of a super solarwind, which penetrates into the Earths polar atmosphere down to E-region heights and, duly concentrated through a funneling action at the winter pole of the distorted geomagnetic field, slows down the winter polar vortex. An equatorward motion of the polar air with its content of nitric oxide brings about the excess of ionization in the upper D-region at lower latitudes. The experimentally observed rhythmic recurrence of the upper winter anomaly is correlated to a possible rhythmic recurrence of the super solarwind. The actual detection of the upper winter anomaly could yield some information on the velocity of the basic solarwind. A by-product of the present analysis, the determination of Ã , the coefficient of collisional detachment of the electrons from the O2 ions, is presented in the Appendix.

Full Text Available The polar solarwind is a fast, tenuous and steady flow that, with the exception of a relatively short phase around the Sun's activity maximum, fills the high-latitude heliosphere. The polar wind properties have been extensively investigated by Ulysses, the first spacecraft able to perform in-situ measurements in the high-latitude heliosphere. The out-of-ecliptic phases of Ulysses cover about seventeen years. This makes possible to study heliospheric properties at high latitudes in different solar cycles. In the present investigation we focus on hourly- to daily-scale fluctuations of the polar wind velocity. Though the polar wind is a quite uniform flow, fluctuations in its velocity do not appear negligible. A simple way to characterize wind velocity variations is that of performing a multi-scale statistical analysis of the wind velocity differences. Our analysis is based on the computation of velocity differences at different time lags and the evaluation of statistical quantities (mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis for the different ensembles. The results clearly show that, though differences exist in the three-dimensional structure of the heliosphere between the investigated solar cycles, the velocity fluctuations in the core of polar coronal holes exhibit essentially unchanged statistical properties.

The lunar regolith is space-weathered to a different degree in response to the different fluxes of incident solarwind particles and micrometeoroids. Crater walls, among other slating surfaces, are good tracers of the space-weathering process because they mature differently depending on the varying incident angles of weathering agents. We divide a crater wall into four quadrants (north, south, east, and west) and analyze the distribution of 950-nm/750-nm reflectance-ratio and 750-nm reflectance values in each wall quadrant, using the topography-corrected images by Multispectral Imager (MI) onboard SELENE (Kaguya). For thousands of impact craters across the Moon, we interpret the spectral distributions in the four wall quadrants in terms of the space weathering by solarwind particles and micrometeoroids and of gardening by meteroids. We take into account the solar-wind shielding by the Earth’s magnetotail to correctly assess the different spectral behaviors between east- and west-facing walls of the craters in the near-side of the Moon.

The lunar surface covered by a layer of dust grains is exposed to solarwind particles and photons coming from the Sun on the sunlit side. Solarwind ions cause sputtering of dust grains or can be implanted into grains. We suppose that as a consequence of ion implantation, an additional energy is transferred to grains, more valence band electrons are excited, and the photoelectron yield is increased. An increase of the photoelectron current causes the enhanced density of electrons that form a sheet above the illuminated lunar surface. Thus, an influence of solarwind ions on the Debye length and photoelectron sheet formation is expected. We present laboratory estimations of work functions and photoelectron yields of a single micron-sized silica grain before and after ion implantation. The silica grain used as a lunar simulant is caught in the electrodynamic trap. Grain's specific charge is evaluated by an analysis of the grain motion within the trap, while its work function is determined from observations of a time evolution of the charge-to-mass ratio when the grain is irradiated by photons of different emission lines. By comparison of the photoelectron current (from grain) with photon flux (from UV source), we establish the photoelectron yield of the trapped object. The influence of ion implantation is thoroughly analyzed and discussed.

Recent measurements of solarwind turbulence report the presence of intermittent, exponentially distributed angular discontinuities in the magnetic field. In this Letter, we study whether such discontinuities can be produced by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. We detect the discontinuities by measuring the fluctuations of the magnetic field direction, Δθ, across fixed spatial increments Δx in direct numerical simulations of MHD turbulence with an imposed uniform guide field B(0). A large region of the probability density function (pdf) for Δθ is found to follow an exponential decay, proportional to exp(-Δθ/θ(*)), with characteristic angle θ(*)≈(14°)(b(rms)/B(0))(0.65) for a broad range of guide-field strengths. We find that discontinuities observed in the solarwind can be reproduced by MHD turbulence with reasonable ratios of b(rms)/B(0). We also observe an excess of small angular discontinuities when Δx becomes small, possibly indicating an increasing statistical significance of dissipation-scale structures. The structure of the pdf in this case closely resembles the two-population pdf seen in the solarwind. We thus propose that strong discontinuities are associated with inertial-range MHD turbulence, while weak discontinuities emerge from dissipation-range turbulence. In addition, we find that the structure functions of the magnetic field direction exhibit anomalous scaling exponents, which indicates the existence of intermittent structures.

Fluctuations in the solarwind fields tend to not only have velocities and magnetic fields correlated in the sense consistent with Alfven waves traveling from the Sun, but they also have the magnitude of the magnetic field remarkably constant despite their being broadband. This paper provides, for the first time, a method for constructing fields with nearly constant magnetic field, zero divergence, and with any specified power spectrum for the fluctuations of the components of the field. Every wave vector, k, is associated with two polarizations the relative phases of these can be chosen to minimize the variance of the field magnitude while retaining the\\random character of the fields. The method is applied to a case with one spatial coordinate that demonstrates good agreement with observed time series and power spectra of the magnetic field in the solarwind, as well as with the distribution of the angles of rapid changes (discontinuities), thus showing a deep connection between two seemingly unrelated issues. It is suggested that using this construction will lead to more realistic simulations of solarwind turbulence and of the propagation of energetic particles.

Wind and solar power are known to be highly influenced by weather events and may ramp up or down abruptly. Such events in the power production influence not only the availability of energy, but also the stability of the entire power grid. By analysing significant amounts of data from several regions around the world with resolutions of seconds to minutes, we provide strong evidence that renewable wind and solar sources exhibit multiple types of variability and nonlinearity in the time scale of seconds and characterise their stochastic properties. In contrast to previous findings, we show that only the jumpy characteristic of renewable sources decreases when increasing the spatial size over which the renewable energies are harvested. Otherwise, the strong non-Gaussian, intermittent behaviour in the cumulative power of the total field survives even for a country-wide distribution of the systems. The strong fluctuating behaviour of renewable wind and solar sources can be well characterised by Kolmogorov-like power spectra and q-exponential probability density functions. Using the estimated potential shape of power time series, we quantify the jumpy or diffusive dynamic of the power. Finally we propose a time delayed feedback technique as a control algorithm to suppress the observed short term non-Gaussian statistics in spatially strong correlated and intermittent renewable sources.

A drawback common to the solar and wind energy systems is their unpredictable nature and dependence on weather and climate on a wide range of time scales. In addition, the variation of the energy output may not match with the time distribution of the load demand. This can partially be solved by the use of batteries for energy storage in stand-alone systems. The problem caused by the variable nature of the solar and wind resources can be partially overcome by the use of energy systems that uses both renewable resources in a combined manner, that is, hybrid wind-solar systems. Since both resources can show complementary characteristics in certain location, the independent use of solar or wind systems results in considerable over sizing of the batteries system compared to the use of hybrid solar-wind systems. Nevertheless, to the day, there is no single recognized method for properly sizing these hybrid wind-solar systems. In this work, we present a method for sizing wind-solar hybrid systems in southern Spain. The method is based on the analysis of the wind and solar resources on daily scale, particularly, its temporal complementary characteristics. The method aims to minimize the size of the energy storage systems, trying to provide the most reliable supply.

We present a new model, MULTI-VP, that computes the three-dimensional structure of the solarwind which includes the chromosphere, the transition region, and the corona and low heliosphere. MULTI- VP calculates a large ensemble of wind profiles flowing along open magnetic field-lines which sample the whole three-dimensional atmosphere or, alternatively, on a given region of interest. The radial domain starts from the photosphere and extends, typically, to about 30 $R_{sun}$ . The elementary uni-dimensional wind solutions are based on a mature numerical scheme which was adapted in order to accept any flux-tube geometry. We discuss here the first results obtained with this model. We use Potential Field Source-Surface (PFSS) extrapolations of magnetograms from the Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO) to determine the structure of the background magnetic field. Our results support the hypothesis that the geometry of the magnetic flux-tubes in the lower corona controls the distribution of slow and fast wind flows. The i...

Full Text Available Due to the geographical situation of Cuba the wind plays an important role in the design of the solar panels. The aim of the research is to evaluate the differences that appear in the support reactions of the panel, due to pressures acting, in correspondence with the implementation of the Cuban standard NC-285: 2003 but varying the pressure coefficient by using standards NBR 6123: 1988, CIRSOC 102, CN-285: 2003, Eurocode 1-4: 2005, ASCE 7-10 and AS-1170.2: 2011. These reactions are also calculat-ed from pressure coefficients obtained by wind tunnel testing on a scale model and coefficients proposed by another international work carried out on a wind tunnel on a similar solar panel. The main conclusions are that: among the standards, the use of the pressure coefficients proposed by the Eurocode 1- 4: 2005 leads to higher values of the support reactions and about the studies on wind tunnel testing, it can be concluded that the use of a total value of pressure coefficient it is not a good approximation to the actual behavior of the pressures on the panel.

The lunar exosphere is generated by several processes each of which generates neutral distributions with different spatial and temporal variability. Solarwind sputtering of the lunar surface is a major process for many regolith-derived species and typically generates neutral distributions with a cosine dependence on solar zenith angle. Complicating this picture are remanent crustal magnetic anomalies on the lunar surface, which decelerate and partially reflect the solarwind before it strikes the surface. We use Kaguya maps of solarwind reflection efficiencies, Lunar Prospector maps of crustal field strengths, and published neutral sputtering yields to calculate anisotropic solarwind sputtering maps. We feed these maps to a Monte Carlo neutral exospheric model to explore three-dimensional exospheric anisotropies and find that significant anisotropies should be present in the neutral exosphere depending on selenographic location and solarwind conditions. Better understanding of solarwind/crustal anomaly interactions could potentially improve our results.

Measurements of high-energy solar-wind electrons have been made from a low orbit around the moon. Solar-wind electrons can be identified up to energies of about 3000 eV, at which an electron population of entirely different characteristics becomes dominant. The solar-wind cavity on the moon's antisolar side shows evidence of being filled by plasma coming from the downstream direction. When the direction of the interplanetary field corresponds to solar ecliptic azimuth angles of about 90 deg, a partial solar-wind cavity extends across most of the eastern sunlit side of the moon within 20 deg of the moon meridian. There are localized increases in the 500-eV electron flux over much of the sunlit hemisphere. These increases are interpreted to be the result of an interaction between the solarwind and the moon that deflects some of the solar-wind flow and results in limb shocks.

This paper has the objective to discus the technical-scientific feasibility of a deep space mission to be proposed to the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB). This mission will be proposed to study the interplanetary magnetic field and the plasma structure of the solarwind. It will consist of a set of identical spacecraft flying in formation in the inner heliosphere during the ascending and maximum phase of the solar cycle 24. It is know that the primary cause of magnetic storms are intense, long duration southward interplanetary magnetic field structures which interconnect with the earth's magnetic field and allow solarwind energy transport into the Earth's magnetotail/magnetosphere. During the most active phase of the solar cycle, solar maximum, the sun's activity is dominated by flares and disappearing filaments, and their concomitant Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). Coronal Holes are present, but the holes are small and do not extend from the poles to the equator as often happens in the descending phase of the solar cycle. The fast (>500 km/s) CMEs coming from the sun into the interplanetary space are the solar/coronal features that contain high magnetic fields. These intense southward magnetic fields are observed in the sheath, in the ejection itself and in the rear of the ejection. The interaction between CMEs and the background solarwind, fast co rotating streams and other CMEs are also very important sources of intense southward magnetic fields. In order to study the interplanetary origin of intense geomagnetic storms, several studies have analyzed plasma parameters, composition, ionization state and the interplanetary magnetic field measured by instruments on board of spacecraft as ISEE3, IMP8, Helios, Ulysses, Wind, SOHO and ACE. Great advance on the understanding of the CME structure and interaction with the background solarwind have been reached. However, the spatial scale of these structures could be greater than 0.2 AU, and this kind of observation usually

While many remote water pumping systems exist (e.g. mechanical windmills, solar photovoltaic , wind-electric, diesel powered), very few combine both the wind and solar energy resources to possibly improve the reliability and the performance of the system. In this paper, off-grid wind turbine (WT) a...

The interaction between Earth's magnetic field and the solarwind results in the formation of a collisionless bow shock 60,000-100,000 km upstream of our planet, as long as the solarwind fast magnetosonic Mach (hereafter Mach) number exceeds unity. Here, we present one of those extremely rare instances, when the solarwind Mach number reached steady values solarwind-magnetosphere coupling which is unusual for planets in our solar system but may be common for close-in extrasolar planets.

Full Text Available Electron density profiles in the Martian ionosphere observed by the radio occultation experiment on board Mars Global Surveyor have been analyzed to determine if the densities are influenced by the solarwind. Evidence is presented that the altitude of the maximum ionospheric electron density shows a positive correlation to the energetic proton flux in the solarwind. The solarwind modulation of the Martian ionosphere can be attributed to heating of the neutral atmosphere by the solarwind energetic proton precipitation. The modulation is observed to be most prominent at high solar zenith angles. It is argued that this is consistent with the proposed modulation mechanism.

Advanced forecasting of space weather requires simulation of the whole Sun-to-Earth system, which necessitates driving magnetospheric models with the outputs from solarwind models. This presents a fundamental difficulty, as the magnetosphere is sensitive to both large-scale solarwind structures, which can be captured by solarwind models, and small-scale solarwind "noise," which is far below typical solarwind model resolution and results primarily from stochastic processes. Following similar approaches in terrestrial climate modeling, we propose statistical "downscaling" of solarwind model results prior to their use as input to a magnetospheric model. As magnetospheric response can be highly nonlinear, this is preferable to downscaling the results of magnetospheric modeling. To demonstrate the benefit of this approach, we first approximate solarwind model output by smoothing solarwind observations with an 8 h filter, then add small-scale structure back in through the addition of random noise with the observed spectral characteristics. Here we use a very simple parameterization of noise based upon the observed probability distribution functions of solarwind parameters, but more sophisticated methods will be developed in the future. An ensemble of results from the simple downscaling scheme are tested using a model-independent method and shown to add value to the magnetospheric forecast, both improving the best estimate and quantifying the uncertainty. We suggest a number of features desirable in an operational solarwind downscaling scheme.

Transient collimated plasma eruptions in the solar corona, commonly known as coronal (or X-ray) jets, are among the most interesting manifestations of solar activity. It has been suggested that these events contribute to the mass and energy content of the corona and solarwind, but the extent of these contributions remains uncertain. We have recently modeled the formation and evolution of coronal jets using a three-dimensional (3D) magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) code with thermodynamics in a large spherical domain that includes the solarwind. Our model is coupled to 3D MHD flux-emergence simulations, i.e, we use boundary conditions provided by such simulations to drive a time-dependent coronal evolution. The model includes parametric coronal heating, radiative losses, and thermal conduction, which enables us to simulate the dynamics and plasma properties of coronal jets in a more realistic manner than done so far. Here we employ these simulations to calculate the amount of mass and energy transported by coronal j...

This Letter reports on the results of numerical simulations which may provide a possible explanation for the strahl broadening during quiet solar conditions. The relevant processes involved in the broadening are due to kinetic quasi-linear wave-particle interaction. Making use of static analytical electron distribution in an inhomogeneous field, it is found that self-generated electrostatic waves at the plasma frequency, i.e., Langmuir waves, are capable of scattering the strahl component, resulting in energy and pitch-angle diffusion that broadens its velocity distribution significantly. The present theoretical results provide an alternative or complementary explanation to the usual whistler diffusion scenario, suggesting that self-induced electrostatic waves at the plasma frequency might play a key role in broadening the solarwind strahl during quiet solar conditions.

Kolmogorov's famous 4/5 law for the Navier-Stokes equation states that in isotropic hydrodynamic (HD) turbulence, the third moment of longitudinal velocity fluctuations at a spatial distance L is (4/5) ɛ ěrt L ěrt where ɛ is the turbulent energy cascade rate = heating rate per unit mass. A definite, signed, third moment is a fundamental property of the turbulent velocity fluctuations arising from the non-linear term in the Navier-Stokes equation, the only direct indicator that a cascade exists, the only measure of what direction that cascade takes (to smaller or larger spatial scales), and the truest indication of the cascade rate. The solarwind is MHD, however, and its turbulence is anisotropic. Dasso et al. (2005) perform a study on the anisotropy in the solarwind as a function of flow speed and find that there exists "quasi-two-dimensional" turbulence in low speed streams and a one dimensional "slab" structure in high speed flow. Politano and Pouquet (1998; PP) have derived an exact expression, valid in anisotropic situations, for the divergence with lag vector L of a certain vector third moment of the fluctuations in the Elsasser variables as a function of L. We perform an analysis of the third-order moment derived by PP. We use 8 years of ACE combine 64-s magnetic field and plasma measurements in variably defined subsets to compute the Elsasser variables in mean-field coordinates for different solarwind conditions (high/low wind speed, yearly, etc.). Most significantly, we attempt to separately resolve parallel and perpendicular cascades relative to the mean magnetic field. We find (1) the third moment structure functions are approximately proportional to lag as expected, (2) the inferred energy dissipation rate for outward-moving waves is larger than for inward-moving waves with many intervals showing evidence of an inverse cascade of the minority component, (3) the total energy-dissipation rate inferred by this method is frequently in disagreement

The interaction of the solarwind with the planets and the interstellar medium is of key importance for the evolution of our solar system. The interaction with Earth's atmosphere is best known for the northern light. In case of Mars, the interaction with the solarwind might have lead to the erosion

We present two-dimensional hydrodynamic models of thermally driven winds from highly irradiated, close-in extra-solar planets. We adopt a very simple treatment of the radiative heating processes at the base of the wind, and instead focus on the differences between the properties of outflows in multidimensions in comparison to spherically symmetric models computed with the same methods. For hot (T > 2 x 10^{4} K) or highly ionized gas, we find strong (supersonic) polar flows are formed above the planet surface which produce weak shocks and outflow on the night-side. In comparison to a spherically symmetric wind with the same parameters, the sonic surface on the day-side is much closer to the planet surface in multidimensions, and the total mass loss rate is reduced by almost a factor of four. We also compute the steady-state structure of interacting planetary and stellar winds. Both winds end in a termination shock, with a parabolic contact discontinuity which is draped over the planet separating the two shock...

The wind resource has been estimated for all of Mali at 7.5 km resolution using the KAMM/WAsP numerical wind atlas methodology. Three domains were used to cover entire country and three sets of wind classes used to capture change in large scale forcing over country. The final output includes generalized climate statistics for any location in Mali, giving wind direction and wind speed distribution. The modelled generalized climate statistics can be used directly in the WAsP software. The preliminary results show a wind resource, which is relatively low, but which under certain conditions may be economically feasible, i.e. at favourably exposed sites, giving enhanced winds, and where practical utilization is possible, given consideration to grid connection or replacement or augmentation of diesel-based electricity systems. The solar energy resource for Mali was assessed for the period between July 2008 and June 2011 using a remote sensing based estimate of the down-welling surface shortwave flux. The remote sensing estimates were adjusted on a month-by-month basis to account for seasonal differences between the remote sensing estimates and in situ data. Calibration was found to improve the coefficient of determination as well as decreasing the mean error both for the calibration and validation data. Compared to the results presented in the ''Renewable energy resources in Mali - preliminary mapping''-report that showed a tendency for underestimation compared to data from the NASA PPOWER/SSE database, the presented results show a very good agreement with the in situ data (after calibration) with no significant bias. Unfortunately, the NASA-database only contains data up until 2005, so a similar comparison could not be done for the time period analyzed in this study, although the agreement with the historic NASA data is still useful as reference. (LN)

Magnetospheric ultra-low frequency (ULF) oscillations in the Pc 4-5 frequency range play an important role in the dynamics of Earth's radiation belts, both by enhancing the radial diffusion through incoherent interactions and through the coherent drift-resonant interactions with trapped radiation belt electrons. The statistical distributions of magnetospheric ULF wave power are known to be strongly dependent on solarwind parameters such as solarwind speed and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) orientation. Statistical characterisation of ULF wave power in the magnetosphere traditionally relies on average solarwind-IMF conditions over a specific time period. In this brief report, we perform an alternative characterisation of the solarwind influence on magnetospheric ULF wave activity through the characterisation of the solarwind driver by its variability using the standard deviation of solarwind parameters rather than a simple time average. We present a statistical study of nearly one solar cycle (1996-2004) of geosynchronous observations of magnetic ULF wave power and find that there is significant variation in ULF wave powers as a function of the dynamic properties of the solarwind. In particular, we find that the variability in IMF vector, rather than variabilities in other parameters (solarwind density, bulk velocity and ion temperature), plays the strongest role in controlling geosynchronous ULF power. We conclude that, although time-averaged bulk properties of the solarwind are a key factor in driving ULF powers in the magnetosphere, the solarwind variability can be an important contributor as well. This highlights the potential importance of including solarwind variability especially in studies of ULF wave dynamics in order to assess the efficiency of solarwind-magnetosphere coupling.

Chondrites are traditionally thought to be samples of undifferentiated bodies that never experienced large-scale melting. However, Allende and several other CV carbonaceous chondrites (Carporzen et al. 2011, Gattacceca et al., submitted) and the H chondrite Portales Valley (Bryson et al., this meeting) contain remanent magnetization acquired well after accretion. The strong intensities (tens of micro Tesla), temporal stability (lasting for several My), and late ages ( 10-100 My after solar system formation) of the magnetizations suggest they are a record of dynamos formed by a molten metallic core. This would imply that the parent bodies of these meteorites were partially differentiated, containing both melted regions and a relic chondritic crust (Abraham et al., this meeting). However, it has alternatively been proposed that CV chondrites may have been magnetized by the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) carried by the early solarwind (Tarduno et al. 2016), and which was hypothesized to be amplified at the nose of the body due to solarwind pile-up. Here we demonstrate that this scenario is unlikely, due to four main factors: 1) the magnitude of the IMF is estimated to be only 0.005 - 0.05 micro T at 1 AU for the young Sun, 2) the lack of an ionosphere and the resistivity of the crust would limit the magnetic field pile-up, 3) the time variability of the IMF in both magnitude and direction [Fig. 1A] would cuase only a fraction of the IMF to diffuse into the body [Fig. 1B], and 4) even the weak field that manages to diffuse in changes over timescales much shorter than the My timescale of magnetization acquisition and thus cannot impart a unidirectional magnetization. We demonstrate these effects quantitatively using analytical arguments, numerical simulations and analysis of solarwind in-situ measurements.

Recently, the NSO/SOLIS team developed variance (error) maps that represent uncertainties in magnetic flux synoptic charts. These uncertainties are determined by the spatial variances of the magnetic flux distribution from full disk magnetograms that contribute to each bin in the synoptic chart. Here we present a study of the effects of variances on solarwind parameters (wind speed, density, magnetic field, and temperature) derived using the WSA-ENLIL model and ensemble modeling approach. We compare the results of the modeling with near-Earth solarwind magnetic field and plasma data as extracted from NASA/GSFC's OMNI data set. We show that analysis of uncertainties may be useful for understanding the sensitivity of the model predictions to short-term evolution of magnetic field and noise in the synoptic magnetograms.

The solarwind is a highly turbulent medium, with a high level of field fluctuations throughout a broad range of scales. These include an inertial range where a turbulent cascade is assumed to be active. The solarwind cascade shows intermittency, which however may depend on the wind conditions. Recent observations have shown that ion-scale magnetic turbulence is almost self-similar, rather than intermittent. A similar result was observed for the high resolution measurements of proton density provided by the spacecraft Spektr-R. Intermittency may be interpreted as the result of the multifractal properties of the turbulent cascade. In this perspective, this paper is devoted to the description of the multifractal properties of the high resolution density measurements. In particular, we have used the standard coarse-graining technique to evaluate the generalized dimensions Dq , and from these the multifractal spectrum f (α) , in two ranges of scale. A fit with the p-model for intermittency provided a quantitative measure of multifractality. Such indicator was then compared with alternative measures: the width of the multifractal spectrum, the peak of the kurtosis, and its scaling exponent. The results indicate that the small-scale fluctuations are multifractal, and suggest that different measures of intermittency are required to fully understand the small scale cascade.

The measurement techniques applied in magnetospheric and ionospheric research enable detection of strong, intrinsic effects of solarwind on ionospheric electrical potential distribution and conductivity of the atmosphere. These manifestations of the solarwind interaction with the magnetosphere and ionosphere are especially evident at high latitudes. The possibility of observing there the response of the atmospheric electricity variables to solarwind has been questioned for a long time despite the fact that the atmospheric electric field and current variations at the ground are physically linked with electric potential of the ionosphere and conductivity of the lower atmosphere. The serious doubts were mainly due to the generally accepted opinion that the highly conducting ionosphere is an almost ideal equipotential electric screen that separates the weakly conductive lower atmosphere of the influence from space. This assumption could not be further upheld in view of the new findings. They have been provided for some time by ground-based atmospheric electric field and current measurements (AEMs) with simultaneous upper atmosphere observations and by corresponding balloon measurements. Recent ground-based AEMs in polar regions, i.e., in the near-subauroral, auroral, and polar cap high-latitude regions, have detected considerable influence of solarwind on the lower-atmosphere electric variables. However, the use of atmospheric electric observations in studying solar-terrestrial relations is still limited. The main reason is difficulty in separating various local meteorological effects, anthropogenic effects, and the effects of the global electric current circuit which affect simultaneously the measured quantities. Transmission of the electric signals through the lower atmosphere can also introduce troublesome disturbances. The paper outlines these problems and hints how the difficulties involved might be partly overcome in a feasible way. The needs and possible

Turbulence is ubiquitous in the solarwind. Turbulence causes kinetic and magnetic energy to cascade to small scales where they are eventually dissipated, adding heat to the plasma. The details of how this occurs are not well understood. This article reviews the evidence for turbulent dissipation and examines various diagnostics for identifying solarwind regions where dissipation is occurring. We also discuss how future missions will further enhance our understanding of the importance of turbulence to solarwind dynamics.

Wind and solar power generations differ from conventional energy generation because of the variable and uncertain nature of their power output. This variability and uncertainty can have significant impacts on grid operations. Thus, short-term forecasting of wind and solar generation is uniquely helpful for power system operations to balance supply and demand in an electricity system. This paper investigates the correlation between wind and solar power forecasting errors.

Alfvénic fluctuations are a ubiquitous component of the solarwind. Evidence from many spacecraft indicates that the fluctuations are convected out of the solar corona with relatively flat power spectra and constitute a source of free energy for a turbulent cascade of magnetic and kinetic energy to high wave numbers. Observations and simulations support the conclusion that the cascade evolves most rapidly in the vicinity of velocity shears and current sheets. Numerical solutions of the magnetohydrodynamic equations have elucidated the role of expansion on the evolution of the turbulence. Such studies are clarifying not only how a turbulent cascade develops, but also the nature of the symmetries of the turbulence. Of particular interest is the origin of the two-component correlation function of magnetic fluctuations that was deduced from ISEE-3 data. A central issue to be resolved is whether the correlation function indicates the existence of a quasi-two- dimensional component of the turbulence, or reflects another origin, such as pressure-balanced structures or small velocity shears. In our efforts to simulate solarwind turbulence we have included a tilted rotating current heliospheric sheet as well as variety of waves (e.g., Alfvénic, quasi-two-dimensional, pressure balance structures) and microstreams. These simulations have replicated many of the observations, but challenges remain.

The solarwind is the Sun's exosphere. As the solar atmosphere expands into interplanetary space, it is accelerated and heated. Data from spacecraft located throughout the heliosphere have revealed that this exosphere has velocities of several hundred kilometers/sec, densities at Earth orbit of about 5 particles/cu cm, and an entrained magnetic field that at Earth orbit that is about 5 10-5 Gauss. A fascinating feature of the solarwind is that the magnetic field fluctuates in a way that is highly reminiscent of "Alfven waves, i.e., the fluctuating magnetic fields are more-or-less aligned with fluctuations in the velocity of the plasma and, with proper normalization, have approximately equal magnitudes. The imperfect (observed) alignment leads to a variety of complex interactions. In many respects, the flow patterns appear to be an example of fully developed magneto fluid turbulence. Recently, the dissipation range of this turbulence has been studied using search coil magnetometer data from the STAFF instrument on the four Cluster spacecraft. I will attempt to give an overview of selected properties of this large-scale and small-scale turbulence.

The Slow SolarWind (SSW) origin is an open issue in the post SOHO era and forms a major objective for planned future missions such as the Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe Plus.Results from spacecraft data, combined with theoretical modeling, have helped to investigate many aspects of the SSW. Fundamental physical properties of the coronal plasma have been derived from spectroscopic and imaging remote-sensing data and in-situ data, and these results have provided crucial insights for a deeper understanding of the origin and acceleration of the SSW.Advances models of the SSW in coronal streamers and other structures have been developed using 3D MHD and multi-fluid equations.Nevertheless, there are still debated questions such as:What are the source regions of SSW? What are their contributions to the SSW?Which is the role of the magnetic topology in corona for the origin, acceleration and energy deposition of SSW?Which are the possible acceleration and heating mechanisms for the SSW?The aim of this study is to present the insights on the SSW origin and formationarisen during the discussions at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) by the Team entitled ''Slowsolar wind sources and acceleration mechanisms in the corona'' held in Bern (Switzerland) in March2014--2015. The attached figure will be presented to summarize the different hypotheses of the SSW formation.

Results of the close-to-Sun plasmas sounding at the transonic region of the solarwind, where the sub-to supersonic flow transition proceeds (at 10 to 40 solar radii from the Sun), are presented. Natural sources of two types were used, water vapour maser sources at 1.35 cm and guasars at 2.9 m wavelength. scattering observations cover the period of 1986 to 1993, Russian Academy of Sciences telescopes RT-22 and DCR-1000 were used, IPS index and scattering angle being the immediate results of observations. Extensive studies of the scintillation index and scattering angle radial profiles reveal a remarkable structural detail, 'transonic region forrunner'-narrow region of diminished scattering close to the internal border of the extended transonic region with its characteristic enhanced scattering. Comparisons of the scattering and plasma velocity profiles let it possible to determine the critical point positions by the comparatively simple scattering observations. This new possibility widely improves the process of the basic data accumulation in the fundamental problem of the solarwind acceleration mechanism.

In this contribution we report sput-tering measurements of anorthite, an analog material representative of the lunar highlands, by singly and multicharged ions representative of the solarwind. The ions investigated include protons, as well as singly and multicharged Ar ions (as proxies for the heavier solarwind constituents), in the charge state range +1 to +9, and had a fixed solar-wind-relevant impact velocity of approximately 310 km/s or 500 eV/ amu. The goal of the measurements was to determine the sputtering contribution of the heavy, multicharged minority solarwind constituents in comparison to that due to the dominant H+ fraction.

The interaction of the solarwind with Earth's magnetosphere gives rise to the bright polar aurorae and to geomagnetic storms, but the relation between the solarwind and the dynamics of the outer planets' magnetospheres is poorly understood. Jupiter's magnetospheric dynamics and aurorae are dominated by processes internal to the jovian system, whereas Saturn's magnetosphere has generally been considered to have both internal and solar-wind-driven processes. This hypothesis, however, is tentative because of limited simultaneous solarwind and magnetospheric measurements. Here we report solarwind measurements, immediately upstream of Saturn, over a one-month period. When combined with simultaneous ultraviolet imaging we find that, unlike Jupiter, Saturn's aurorae respond strongly to solarwind conditions. But in contrast to Earth, the main controlling factor appears to be solarwind dynamic pressure and electric field, with the orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field playing a much more limited role. Saturn's magnetosphere is, therefore, strongly driven by the solarwind, but the solarwind conditions that drive it differ from those that drive the Earth's magnetosphere.

Full Text Available This paper presents power-control strategies of a grid-connected hybrid generation system with versatile power transfer. The hybrid system allows maximum utilization of freely available renewable sources like wind and photovoltaic energies. This paper presents a new system configuration of the multi input rectifier stage for a hybrid wind and photovoltaic energy system. This configuration allows the two sources to supply the load simultaneously depending on the availability of the energy sources maximum power from the sun when it is available. An adaptive MPPT algorithm with a standard perturbs and observed method will be used for the Photo Voltaic system. The main advantage of the hybrid system is to give continuous power supply to the load. The gating pulses to the inverter switches are implemented with conventional and fuzzy controller. This hybrid wind-photo voltaic system is modeled in MATLAB/ SIMULINK environment. Simulation circuit is analyzed and results are presented for this hybrid wind and solar energy system.

Models for the origin of the slow solarwind must account for two seemingly contradictory observations: The slow wind has the composition of the closed field corona, implying that it originates from the continuous opening and closing of flux at the boundary between open and closed field. On the other hand, the slow wind also has large angular width, up to ~ 60{\\circ}, suggesting that its source extends far from the open-closed boundary. We propose a model that can explain both observations. The key idea is that the source of the slow wind at the Sun is a network of narrow (possibly singular) open-field corridors that map to a web of separatrices and quasi-separatrix layers in the heliosphere. We compute analytically the topology of an open-field corridor and show that it produces a quasi-separatrix layer in the heliosphere that extends to angles far from the heliospheric current sheet. We then use an MHD code and MDI/SOHO observations of the photospheric magnetic field to calculate numerically, with high spat...

The slow solarwind, or at least a significant part of it, originates from the region bordering streamer helmets, where the flow tube geometry is distinct from flow tubes rooted in the center of coronal holes. We examine whether this particular tube geometry leads to standing shocks in the inner slow wind in this region. To isolate the influence of tube geometry, a simple isothermal wind model is employed and is solved in terms of the Lambert W function. In addition to a continuous solution, the model may also admit solutions with shocks, readily constructed with a graphical approach. When allowed, the shock solutions appear in pairs, one with a shock located in the streamer stalk, the other with a shock below the cusp along the streamer border. We show that solutions with standing shocks exist in a broad area in the parameter space characterizing the wind temperature and flow tube. In particular, streamers with cusps located at a heliocentric distance $\\gtrsim 3.2 R_\\odot$ can readily support discontinuous s...

The Western Wind and Solar Integration Study (WWSIS) explores various aspects of the challenges and impacts of integrating large amounts of wind and solar energy into the electric power system of the West. The phase 2 study (WWSIS-2) is one of the first to include dispatchable concentrating solar power (CSP) with thermal energy storage (TES) in multiple scenarios of renewable penetration and mix. As a result, it provides unique insights into CSP plant operation, grid benefits, and how CSP operation and configuration may need to change under scenarios of increased renewable penetration. Examination of the WWSIS-2 results indicates that in all scenarios, CSP plants with TES provides firm system capacity, reducing the net demand and the need for conventional thermal capacity. The plants also reduced demand during periods of short-duration, high ramping requirements that often require use of lower efficiency peaking units. Changes in CSP operation are driven largely by the presence of other solar generation, particularly PV. Use of storage by the CSP plants increases in the higher solar scenarios, with operation of the plant often shifted to later in the day. CSP operation also becomes more variable, including more frequent starts. Finally, CSP output is often very low during the day in scenarios with significant PV, which helps decrease overall renewable curtailment (over-generation). However, the configuration studied is likely not optimal for High Solar Scenario implying further analysis of CSP plant configuration is needed to understand its role in enabling high renewable scenarios in the Western United States.

We study the ability of magnetic helicity expulsion to alleviate catastrophic $\\alpha$-quenching in mean field dynamos in two--dimensional spherical wedge domains. Motivated by the physical state of the outer regions of the Sun, we consider $\\alpha^2\\Omega$ mean field models with a dynamical $\\alpha$ quenching. We include two mechanisms which have the potential to facilitate helicity expulsion, namely advection by a mean flow (``solarwind'') and meridional circulation. We find that a wind alone can prevent catastrophic quenching, with the field saturating at finite amplitude. In certain parameter ranges, the presence of a large-scale meridional circulation can reinforce this alleviation. However, the saturated field strengths are typically below the equipartition field strength. We discuss possible mechanisms that might increase the saturated field.

Aims: We study the ability of magnetic helicity expulsion to alleviate catastrophic α-quenching in mean field dynamos in two-dimensional spherical wedge domains. Methods: Motivated by the physical state of the outer regions of the Sun, we consider α^2Ω mean field models with a dynamical α quenching. We include two mechanisms which have the potential to facilitate helicity expulsion, namely advection by a mean flow ("solarwind") and meridional circulation. Results: We find that a wind alone can prevent catastrophic quenching, with the field saturating at finite amplitude. In certain parameter ranges, the presence of a large-scale meridional circulation can reinforce this alleviation. However, the saturated field strengths are typically below the equipartition field strength. We discuss possible mechanisms that might increase the saturated field.

The authors report on an assessment of extensive solarwind and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) data obtained by ISEE-3, between Aug 1978 and Oct 1982, when it was upstream of the earth's bow shock. They looked for events given the name planar magnetic structure (PMS). A PMS event is a series of abrupt changes in the IMF, where the magnetic field is observed to take almost all values in some plane. Numerous possible explanations have been offered for these phenomena, and the authors looked at this data set to see if it would aid in the understanding of the origin of PMS. They observed the PMS events to generally be associated with two events: they tended to occur near the interplanetary current sheet, or; they tended to occur in the sheath of the wind plasma between an interplanetary shock, and the plasma which drove it.

Petschek-type time-dependent reconnection (TDR) and quasi-stationary reconnection (QSR) models are considered to understand reconnection outflow structures and the features of the associated locally generated turbulence in the solarwind. We show that the outflow structures, such as discontinuites, Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) unstable flux tubes or continuous space filling flows cannot be distinguished from one-point WIND measurements. In both models the reconnection outflows can generate more or less spatially extended turbulent boundary layers (TBDs). The structure of an unique extended reconnection outflow is investigated in detail. The analysis of spectral scalings and break locations show that reconnection outflows can control the local field and plasma conditions which may play in favor of one or another turbulent dissipation mechanisms with their characteristic scales and wavenumbers.

We report on the in-flight performance of the SolarWind Ion Analyzer (SWIA) and observations of the Mars-solarwind interaction made during the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) prime mission and a portion of its extended mission, covering 0.85 Martian years. We describe the data products returned by SWIA and discuss the proper handling of measurements made with different mechanical attenuator states and telemetry modes, and the effects of penetrating and scattered backgrounds, limited phase space coverage, and multi-ion populations on SWIA observations. SWIA directly measures solarwind protons and alpha particles upstream from Mars. SWIA also provides proxy measurements of solarwind and neutral densities based on products of charge exchange between the solarwind and the hydrogen corona. Together, upstream and proxy observations provide a complete record of the solarwind experienced by Mars, enabling organization of the structure, dynamics, and ion escape from the magnetosphere. We observe an interaction that varies with season and solarwind conditions. Solarwind dynamic pressure, Mach number, and extreme ultraviolet flux all affect the bow shock location. We confirm the occurrence of order-of-magnitude seasonal variations of the hydrogen corona. We find that solarwind Alfvén waves, which provide an additional energy input to Mars, vary over the mission. At most times, only weak mass loading occurs upstream from the bow shock. However, during periods with near-radial interplanetary magnetic fields, structures consistent with Short Large Amplitude Magnetic Structures and their wakes form upstream, dramatically reconfiguring the Martian bow shock and magnetosphere.

We present analysis of the solarwind (SW) structure and its association with coronal sources during the minimum and rising phase of 24th solar cycle (2009-2011). The coronal sources prominent in this period - coronal holes, small areas of open magnetic fields near active regions and transient sources associated with small-scale solar activity have been investigated using EUV solar images and soft X-ray fluxes obtained by the CORONAS-Photon/TESIS/Sphinx, PROBA2/SWAP, Hinode/EIS and AIA/SDO instruments as well as the magnetograms obtained by HMI/SDO. It was found that at solar minimum (2009) velocity and magnetic field strength of high speed wind (HSW) and transient SW from small-scale flares did not differ significantly from those of the background slow speed wind (SSW). The major difference between parameters of different SW components was seen in the ion composition represented by the C6/C5, O7/O6, Fe/O ratios and the mean charge of Fe ions. With growing solar activity, the speed of HSW increased due to transformation of its sources - small-size low-latitude coronal holes into equatorial extensions of large polar holes. At that period, the ion composition of transient SW changed from low-temperature to high-temperature values, which was caused by variation of the source conditions and change of the recombination/ionization rates during passage of the plasma flow through the low corona. However, we conclude that criteria of separation of the SW components based on the ion ratios established earlier by Zhao&Fisk (2009) for higher solar activity are not applicable to the extremely weak beginning of 24th cycle. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under the grant agreement eHeroes (project n° 284461, www.eheroes.eu).

Charge exchange (CX) has emerged in X-ray emission modeling as a significant process that must be considered in many astrophysical environments—particularly comets. Comets host an interaction between solarwind ions and cometary neutrals to promote solarwind charge exchange (SWCX). X-ray observatories provide astronomers and astrophysicists with data for many X-ray emitting comets that are impossible to accurately model without reliable CX data. Here, we utilize a streamlined set of computer programs that incorporate the multi-channel Landau-Zener theory and a cascade model for X-ray emission to generate cross sections and X-ray line ratios for a variety of bare and non-bare ion single electron capture (SEC) collisions. Namely, we consider collisions between the solarwind constituent bare and H-like ions of C, N, O, Ne, Na, Mg, Al, and Si and the cometary neutrals H2O, CO, CO2, OH, and O. To exemplify the application of this data, we model the X-ray emission of Comet C/2000 WM1 (linear) using the CX package in SPEX and find excellent agreement with observations made with the XMM-Newton RGS detector. Our analyses show that the X-ray intensity is dominated by SWCX with H, while H2O plays a secondary role. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that CX cross sections have been implemented into a X-ray spectral fitting package to determine the H to H2O ratio in cometary atmospheres. The CX data sets are incorporated into the modeling packages SPEX and Kronos.

We have revisited the problem of propagation of toroidal and linear Alfven waves formulated by Heinemann and Olbert (1980) to compare WKB and non-WKB waves and their effects on the solarwind. They considered two solarwind models and showed that reflection is important for Alfven waves with periods of the order of one day and longer, and that non-WKB Alfven waves are no more effective in accelerating the solarwind than WKB waves. There are several recently published papers which seem to indicate that Alfven waves with periods of the order of several minutes should be treated as non-WKB waves and that these non-WKB waves exert a stronger acceleration force than WKB waves. The purpose of this paper is to study the origin of these discrepancies by performing parametric studies of the behavior of the waves under a variety of different conditions. In addition, we want to investigate two problems that have not been addressed by Heinemann and Olbert, namely, calculate the efficiency of Alfven wave reflection by using the reflection coefficient and identify the region of strongest wave reflection in different wind models. To achieve these goals, we investigated the influence of temperature, electron density distribution, wind velocity and magnetic field strength on the waves. The obtained results clearly demonstrate that Alfven wave reflection is strongly model dependent and that the strongest reflection can be expected in models with the base temperatures higher than 10(exp 6) K and with the base densities lower than 7 x 10(exp 7) cm(exp -3). In these models as well as in the models with lower temperatures and higher densities, Alfven waves with periods as short as several minutes have negligible reflection so that they can be treated as WKB waves; however, for Alfven waves with periods of the order of one hour or longer reflection is significant, requiring a non-WKB treatment. We also show that non-WKB, linear Alfven waves are always less effective in accelerating the

The nature of subproton scale fluctuations in the solarwind is an open question, partly because two similar types of electromagnetic turbulence can occur: kinetic Alfven turbulence and whistler turbulence. These two possibilities, however, have one key qualitative difference: whistler turbulence, unlike kinetic Alfven turbulence, has negligible power in density fluctuations. In this Letter, we present new observational data, as well as analytical and numerical results, to investigate this difference. The results show, for the first time, that the fluctuations well below the proton scale are predominantly kinetic Alfven turbulence, and, if present at all, the whistler fluctuations make up only a small fraction of the total energy.

Nakariakov et al. (1996) investigated the linear magnetosonic waves trapped within solarwind flow tubes, where they accounted for a slab having boundaries at $x = \\pm d$ and extended up to infinity in the $y$ and $z$ directions. Srivastava and Dwivedi (2006) claimed to extend that work by considering a two-dimensional slab. We find that the work of Srivastava and Dwivedi (2006) is not for a two-dimensional slab and has a number of discrepancies. Further, their results for body waves are not ...

We present a new model for the transport of solarwind fluctuations which treats them as two interacting incompressible components: quasi-two-dimensional turbulence and a wave-like piece. Quantities solved for include the energy, cross helicity, and characteristic transverse length scale of each component, plus the proton temperature. The development of the model is outlined and numerical solutions are compared with spacecraft observations. Compared to previous single-component models, this new model incorporates a more physically realistic treatment of fluctuations induced by pickup ions and yields improved agreement with observed values of the correlation length, while maintaining good observational accord with the energy, cross helicity, and temperature.

In a three species electron-ion-dust plasma following a generalized non-Maxwellian distribution function (Lorentzian or kappa), it is shown that a kinetic instability of dust-acoustic mode exists. The instability threshold is affected when such (quasineutral) plasma permeates through another static plasma. Such case is of interest when the solarwind is streaming through the cometary plasma in the presence of interstellar dust. In the limits of phase velocity of the waves larger and smaller than the thermal velocity of dust particles, the dispersion properties and growth rate of dust-acoustic mode are investigated analytically with validation via numerical analysis.

The anisotropic nature of solarwind magnetic fluctuations is investigated scale-by-scale using high cadence in-situ magnetic field measurements spanning five decades in scales from the inertial to dissipation ranges of plasma turbulence. We find an abrupt transition at ion kinetic scales to a single isotropic stochastic process that characterizes the dissipation range on all observable scales. In contrast to the inertial range, this is accompanied by a successive scale-invariant reduction in the ratio between parallel and transverse power. We suggest a possible phase space mechanism for this, based on nonlinear wave-particle interactions, operating in this scale-invariant isotropic manner.

Full Text Available Renewable energy sources (RES exhibit various characteristics when it comes to their availability in time and space domain. Some are characterised by significant variability and limited predictability. This makes their integration to the power grid a complicated task. Temporal and spatial complementarity of RES is perceived as one of the possible ways to facilitate the process of integration. This paper investigates the concept of temporal complementarity of solarwind and hydrokinetic energy in case of two sites in Poland. Obtained results indicate existence of some beneficial complementarity on inter-annual and annual time scale. Combination of those three RES in one hybrid system makes power source more reliable.

Full Text Available With the high development of world economy, the demand of energy is increasing all the time, As energy shortage and environment problem are increasing outstanding, Renewable energy has been attracting more and more attention. A kind of three sides billboard supply by wind-Solar hybrid system has been designed in this paper, the overall structure of the system, components, working principle and control strategy has been analyzed from the system perspective. The software and hardware of the system are debugged together and the result is acquired. System function is better and has achieved the expected results.

Nonlinear energy transfer and dissipation in Alfv\\'en wave turbulence are analyzed in the first gyrokinetic simulation spanning all scales from the tail of the MHD range to the electron gyroradius scale. For typical solarwind parameters at 1 AU, about 30% of the nonlinear energy transfer close to the electron gyroradius scale is mediated by modes in the tail of the MHD cascade. Collisional dissipation occurs across the entire kinetic range $k_\\perp\\rho_i\\gtrsim 1$. Both mechanisms thus act on multiple coupled scales, which have to be retained for a comprehensive picture of the dissipation range in Alfv\\'enic turbulence.

Venus has intrigued planetary scientists for decades because of its huge contrasts to Earth, in spite of its nickname of "Earth's Twin". Its invisible upper atmosphere and space environment are also part of the larger story of Venus and its evolution. In 60s to 70s, several missions (Venera and Mariner series) explored Venus-solarwind interaction regions. They identified the basic structure of the near-Venus space environment, for example, existence of the bow shock, magnetotail, ionosphere, as well as the lack of the intrinsic magnetic field. A huge leap in knowledge about the solarwind interaction with Venus was made possible by the 14-year long mission, Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO), launched in 1978. More recently, ESA's probe, Venus Express (VEX), was inserted into orbit in 2006, operated for 8 years. Owing to its different orbit from that of PVO, VEX made unique measurements in the polar and terminator regions, and probed the near-Venus tail for the first time. The near-tail hosts dynamic processes that lead to plasma energization. These processes in turn lead to the loss of ionospheric ions to space, slowly eroding the Venusian atmosphere. VEX carried an ion spectrometer with a moderate mass-separation capability and the observed ratio of the escaping hydrogen and oxygen ions in the wake indicates the stoichiometric loss of water from Venus. The structure and dynamics of the induced magnetosphere depends on the prevailing solarwind conditions. VEX studied the response of the magnetospheric system on different time scales. A plethora of waves was identified by the magnetometer on VEX; some of them were not previously observed by PVO. Proton cyclotron waves were seen far upstream of the bow shock, mirror mode waves were observed in magnetosheath and whistler mode waves, possibly generated by lightning discharges were frequently seen. VEX also encouraged renewed numerical modeling efforts, including fluid-type of models and particle-fluid hybrid type of models

We use Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE)/SolarWind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICS) elemental composition data to compare the variations in solarwind (SW) fractionation as measured by SWICS during the last solar maximum (1999–2001), the solar minimum (2006–2009), and the period in which the Genesis spacecraft was collecting SW (late 2001—early 2004). We differentiate our analysis in terms of SW regimes (i.e., originating from interstream or coronal hole flows, or coronal mass ejecta). Abundances are normalized to the low-first ionization potential (low-FIP) ion magnesium to uncover correlations that are not apparent when normalizing to high-FIP ions. We find that relative to magnesium, the other low-FIP elements are measurably fractionated, but the degree of fractionation does not vary significantly over the solar cycle. For the high-FIP ions, variation in fractionation over the solar cycle is significant: greatest for Ne/Mg and C/Mg, less so for O/Mg, and the least for He/Mg. When abundance ratios are examined as a function of SW speed, we find a strong correlation, with the remarkable observation that the degree of fractionation follows a mass-dependent trend. We discuss the implications for correcting the Genesis sample return results to photospheric abundances.

Several multi-site stochastic generators of zonal and meridional components of wind are proposed in this paper. A regime-switching framework is introduced to account for the alternation of intensity and variability that is observed in wind conditions due to the existence of different weather types. This modeling blocks time series into periods in which the series is described by a single model. The regime-switching is modeled by a discrete variable that can be introduced as a latent (or hidden) variable or as an observed variable. In the latter case a clustering algorithm is used before fitting the model to extract the regime. Conditional on the regimes, the observed wind conditions are assumed to evolve as a linear Gaussian vector autoregressive (VAR) model. Various questions are explored, such as the modeling of the regime in a multi-site context, the extraction of relevant clusterings from extra variables or from the local wind data, and the link between weather types extracted from wind data and large-scale weather regimes derived from a descriptor of the atmospheric circulation. We also discuss the relative advantages of hidden and observed regime-switching models. For artificial stochastic generation of wind sequences, we show that the proposed models reproduce the average space-time motions of wind conditions, and we highlight the advantage of regime-switching models in reproducing the alternation of intensity and variability in wind conditions.

The novel propellantless electric solarwind sail concept promises efficient low thrust transportation in the Solar System outside Earth's magnetosphere. Combined with asteroid mining to provide water and synthetic cryogenic rocket fuel in orbits of Earth and Mars, possibilities for affordable continuous manned presence on Mars open up. Orbital fuel and water enable reusable bidirectional Earth-Mars vehicles for continuous manned presence on Mars and allow smaller fuel fraction of spacecraft than what is achievable by traditional means. Water can also be used as radiation shielding of the manned compartment, thus reducing the launch mass further. In addition, the presence of fuel in the orbit of Mars provides the option for an all-propulsive landing, thus potentially eliminating issues of heavy heat shields and augmenting the capability of pinpoint landing. With this E-sail enabled scheme, the recurrent cost of continuous bidirectional traffic between Earth and Mars might ultimately approach the recurrent cost of running the International Space Station, ISS.

The novel propellantless electric solarwind sail (E-sail) concept promises efficient low thrust transportation in the solar system outside Earth's magnetosphere. Combined with asteroid mining to provide water and synthetic cryogenic rocket fuel in orbits of Earth and Mars, possibilities for affordable continuous manned presence on Mars open up. Orbital fuel and water eliminate the exponential nature of the rocket equation and also enable reusable bidirectional Earth-Mars vehicles for continuous manned presence on Mars. Water can also be used as radiation shielding of the manned compartment, thus reducing the launch mass further. In addition, the presence of fuel in Mars orbit provides the option for an all-propulsive landing, thus potentially eliminating issues of heavy heat shields and augmenting the capability of pinpoint landing. With this E-sail enabled scheme, the recurrent cost of continuous bidirectional traffic between Earth and Mars might ultimately approach the recurrent cost of running the Interna...

Understanding and predicting solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) is of critical importance for mitigating their disruptive behavior on ground- and space-based technologies. While predictive models of CME propagation and evolution have relied primarily on sparse in-situ data along with ground and satellite images for validation purposes, emerging laboratory efforts have shown that CME-like events can be created with parameters applicable to the solarregime that may likewise aid in predictive modeling. A modified version of the coaxial plasma gun from the Plasma Bubble Expansion Experiment (PBEX) [A. G. Lynn, Y. Zhang, S. C. Hsu, H. Li, W. Liu, M. Gilmore, and C. Watts, Bull. Amer. Phys. Soc. 52, 53 (2007)] will be used in conjunction with the Helicon-Cathode (HelCat) basic plasma science device in order to observe the magnetic characteristics of CMEs as they propagate through the solarwind. The evolution of these interactions will be analyzed using a multi-tip Langmuir probe array, a 33-position B-dot probe array, and a high speed camera. The results of this investigation will be used alongside the University of Michigan's BATS-R-US 3-D MHD numerical code, which will be used to perform simulations of the coaxial plasma gun experiment. The results of these two approaches will be compared in order to validate the capabilities of the BATS-R-US code as well as to further our understanding of magnetic reconnection and other processes that take place as CMEs propagate through the solarwind. The details of the experimental setup as well as the analytical approach are discussed.

The ratio of the rms electron density fluctuations to the background density in the solarwind (density modulation index, ε {sub N} ≡ ΔN/N) is of vital importance for understanding several problems in heliospheric physics related to solarwind turbulence. In this paper, we have investigated the behavior of ε {sub N} in the inner heliosphere from 0.26 to 0.82 AU. The density fluctuations ΔN have been deduced using extensive ground-based observations of interplanetary scintillation at 327 MHz, which probe spatial scales of a few hundred kilometers. The background densities (N) have been derived using near-Earth observations from the Advanced Composition Explorer. Our analysis reveals that 0.001 ≲ ε {sub N} ≲ 0.02 and does not vary appreciably with heliocentric distance. We also find that ε {sub N} declines by 8% from 1998 to 2008. We discuss the impact of these findings on problems ranging from our understanding of Forbush decreases to the behavior of the solarwind dynamic pressure over the recent peculiar solar minimum at the end of cycle 23.

We determine the magnetic helicity, along with the magnetic energy, at high latitudes using data from the Ulysses mission. The data set spans the time period from 1993 to 1996. The basic assumption of the analysis is that the solarwind is homogeneous. Because the solarwind speed is high, we follow the approach first pioneered by Matthaeus et al. by which, under the assumption of spatial homogeneity, one can use Fourier transforms of the magnetic field time series to construct one-dimensional spectra of the magnetic energy and magnetic helicity under the assumption that the Taylor frozen-in-flow hypothesis is valid. That is a well-satisfied assumption for the data used in this study. The magnetic helicity derives from the skew-symmetric terms of the three-dimensional magnetic correlation tensor, while the symmetric terms of the tensor are used to determine the magnetic energy spectrum. Our results show a sign change of magnetic helicity at wavenumber k approximately equal to 2AU(sup -1) (or frequency nu approximately equal to 2 microHz) at distances below 2.8AU and at k approximately equal to 30AU(sup -1) (or nu approximately equal to 25 microHz) at larger distances. At small scales the magnetic helicity is positive at northern heliographic latitudes and negative at southern latitudes. The positive magnetic helicity at small scales is argued to be the result of turbulent diffusion reversing the sign relative to what is seen at small scales at the solar surface. Furthermore, the magnetic helicity declines toward solar minimum in 1996. The magnetic helicity flux integrated separately over one hemisphere amounts to about 10(sup 45) Mx(sup 2) cycle(sup -1) at large scales and to a three times lower value at smaller scales.

The Genesis mission sampled solarwind ions to document the elemental and isotopic compositions of the Sun and, by inference, of the protosolar nebula. Nitrogen was a key target element because the extent and origin of its isotopic variations in solar system materials remain unknown. Isotopic analysis of a Genesis SolarWind Concentrator target material shows that implanted solarwind nitrogen has a (15)N/(14)N ratio of 2.18 ± 0.02 × 10(-3) (that is, ≈40% poorer in (15)N relative to terrestrial atmosphere). The (15)N/(14)N ratio of the protosolar nebula was 2.27 ± 0.03 × 10(-3), which is the lowest (15)N/(14)N ratio known for solar system objects. This result demonstrates the extreme nitrogen isotopic heterogeneity of the nascent solar system and accounts for the (15)N-depleted components observed in solar system reservoirs.

The solarwind, a supersonic plasma flow continuously emanating from the Sun, governs the space environment in a vast region extending to the boundary of the heliosphere (∼100 AU). Precise understanding of the solarwind is of importance not only because it will satisfy scientific interest in an enigmatic astrophysical phenomenon, but because it has broad impacts on relevant fields. Interplanetary scintillation (IPS) of compact radio sources at meter to centimeter wavelengths serves as a useful ground-based method for investigating the solarwind. IPS measurements of the solarwind at a frequency of 327 MHz have been carried out regularly since the 1980s using the multi-station system of the Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory (STEL) of Nagoya University. This paper reviews new aspects of the solarwind revealed from our IPS observations.

Performance characteristics of a combined solar/wind power system equipped with storage and an unspecified back-up power source are studied on the basis of meteorological data in Denmark from 1959-1972. A model for annual production and storage from wind/solar installations is presented, assuming 12% efficiency for the solar cells and various power coefficients of the windmills, in addition to long and short-term storage. Noting that no correlation between wind and solar energy availability was found, and a constant ratio of 60% wind/40% solar was determined to be the optimum mix for large scale power production without taking into consideration the variations among years. It is concluded that 80-90% of the total Danish electrical load can be covered by solar/wind systems, and 100% may be possible with the addition of pumped hydroelectric storage.

The solarwind is filled sudden velocity shears. The shears take the form of vorticity layers co-located with current sheets. The velocity vector makes its change in a few seconds. For shear layers with vector velocity changes greater than 50 km/s, an average of 12 shear layers pass the Earth per day. Global magnetospheric MHD simulations with four different simulation codes have been performed at the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) to examine the reaction of the Earth to the solar-wind velocity shears. All 4 simulation codes predict comet-like disconnections of the magnetotail, the magnetosheath, and the bow shock on the flanks as a shear layer passes the Earth. The simulation codes also predict sudden changes in the cross-polar-cap potential and ionospheric Joule dissipation as the shear layers pass the Earth. A data-analysis research effort is underway to look for signatures of the Earth's reaction to abrupt wind shear events; preliminary results of that effort will be discussed.

The relevance of the solarwind with the magnetosphere of Jupiter that contains positively charged dust grains is investigated. The perturbation/excitation caused by streaming ions and electron beams from the solarwind could form different nonlinear structures such as rogue waves, depending on the dominant role of the plasma parameters. Using the reductive perturbation method, the basic set of fluid equations is reduced to modified Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) and further modified (KdV) equation. Assuming that the frequency of the carrier wave is much smaller than the ion plasma frequency, these equations are transformed into nonlinear Schrödinger equations with appropriate coefficients. Rational solution of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation shows that rogue wave envelopes are supported by the present plasma model. It is found that the existence region of rogue waves depends on the dust-acoustic speed and the streaming temperatures for both the ions and electrons. The dependence of the maximum rogue wave envelope amplitude on the system parameters has been investigated.

Wind and solar industries have grown rapidly in recent years but they still supply only a small fraction of global electricity. The continued growth of these industries to levels that significantly contribute to climate change mitigation will depend on whether they can compete against alternatives that provide high-value energy on demand. Energy storage can transform intermittent renewables for this purpose but cost improvement is needed. Evaluating diverse storage technologies on a common scale has proved a major challenge, however, owing to their widely varying performance along the two dimensions of energy and power costs. Here we devise a method to compare storage technologies, and set cost improvement targets. Some storage technologies today are shown to add value to solar and wind energy, but cost reduction is needed to reach widespread profitability. The optimal cost improvement trajectories, balancing energy and power costs to maximize value, are found to be relatively location invariant, and thus can inform broad industry and government technology development strategies.

In a recent paper, Kim et al. put forth a steady-state model for the solarwind electrons. The model assumed local equilibrium between the halo electrons, characterized by an intermediate energy range, and the whistler-range fluctuations. The basic wave–particle interaction is assumed to be the cyclotron resonance. Similarly, it was assumed that a dynamical steady state is established between the highly energetic superhalo electrons and high-frequency Langmuir fluctuations. Comparisons with the measured solarwind electron velocity distribution function (VDF) during quiet times were also made, and reasonable agreements were obtained. In such a model, however, only the steady-state solution for the Fokker–Planck type of electron particle kinetic equation was considered. The present paper complements the previous analysis by considering both the steady-state particle and wave kinetic equations. It is shown that the model halo and superhalo electron VDFs, as well as the assumed wave intensity spectra for the whistler and Langmuir fluctuations, approximately satisfy the quasi-linear wave kinetic equations in an approximate sense, thus further validating the local equilibrium model constructed in the paper by Kim et al.

This Letter puts forth a possible explanation for the formation of a solarwind strahl electron distribution function by means of local wave–particle interactions. A solarwind electron consists of a core and the hot “halo” electrons, which possess a net drift speed with respect to the core. According to the present model, pitch angle scattering of the initially isotropic drifting halo occurs when the enhanced whistler waves are excited by mildly anisotropic core electrons. The pitch angle scattering primarily affects the halo moving in the anti-sunward direction, resulting in pitch angle diffusion across the 90° gap through a nonlinear scattering process, and consequently leading to a reduction in the net drift speed of halo electrons. The remaining portion of the anti-sunward moving halo, which is not affected by pitch angle scattering, simply appears to form a field-aligned strahl in the electron velocity distribution. The present scenario of local generation of the strahl is demonstrated by the particle-in-cell simulation.

Independent and automated validation is a vital step in the progression of models from the research community into operational forecasting use. In this paper we describe a program in development at the CCMC to provide just such a comprehensive validation for models of the ambient solarwind in the inner heliosphere. We have built upon previous efforts published in the community, sharpened their definitions, and completed a baseline study. We also provide first results from this program of the comparative performance of the MHD models available at the CCMC against that of the Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model. An important goal of this effort is to provide a consistent validation to all available models. Clearly exposing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different models will enable forecasters to craft more reliable ensemble forecasting strategies. Models of the ambient solarwind are developing rapidly as a result of improvements in data supply, numerical techniques, and computing resources. It is anticipated that in the next five to ten years, the MHD based models will supplant semi-empirical potential based models such as the WSA model, as the best available forecast models. We anticipate that this validation effort will track this evolution and so assist policy makers in gauging the value of past and future investment in modeling support.

"Magnetic holes", localized depressions in the interplanetary magnetic field, have been identified in Ulysses data over a range of several AU and as far as 23 degrees south in latitude by Winterhalter et al., who concluded that these structures are most likely the remnants of structures caused by occasional mirror-mode instability in the solarwind. However, these authors, like a number of previous investigators, used the mirror stability criterion derived from the kinetic theory under very special assumptions. On the other hand, theoretical investigations using the fully self-consistent kinetic theory (Vlasov-Maxwell equations) have shown that the mirror stability criterion is more complicated when electrons and ions have different anisotropies, as is normally the case in the solarwind. Winterhalter et al used an instability criterion of the form R is greater than 1, where R is a function of the thermal anisotropy; the correct criterion (for bi-Maxwellian distributions) is R R is greater than 1 - x(exp 2), where x is a real quantity that depends on both the proton anisotropy and electron anisotropy. So nonzero x would modify the Winterhalter et al results in the direction of reinforcing their conclusions. We have revisited the instability criterion in its most general form, allowing for (a) non-Maxwellian velocity distributions, (b) multiple ion species, and (c) interparticle streaming. These results should give sound theoretical grounding for future observational studies related to the mirror instability, by Ulysses and other spacecraft.

Electron scale solarwind turbulence has attracted great interest in recent years. Clear evidences have been given from the Cluster data that turbulence is not fully dissipated near the proton scale but continues cascading down to the electron scales. However, the scaling of the energy spectra as well as the nature of the plasma modes involved at those small scales are still not fully determined. Here we survey 10 years of the Cluster search-coil magnetometer (SCM) waveforms measured in the solarwind and perform a statistical study of the magnetic energy spectra in the frequency range [$1, 180$]Hz. We show that a large fraction of the spectra exhibit clear breakpoints near the electon gyroscale $\\rho_e$, followed by steeper power-law like spectra. We show that the scaling below the electron breakpoint cannot be determined unambiguously due to instrumental limitations that will be discussed in detail. We compare our results to recent ones reported in other studies and discuss their implication on the physical...

The solarwind shows striking characteristics that suggest that it is a turbulent magnetofluid, but the picture is not altogether simple. From the earliest observations, a strong correlation between magnetic fluctuations and plasma velocity fluctuations was noted. The high corrections suggest that the fluctuations are Alfven waves. In addition, the power spectrum of the magnetic fluctuation showed evidence of an inertial range that resembled that seen in fully-developed fluid turbulence. Alfven waves, however, are exact solutions of the equations of incompressible magnetohydrodynamics. Thus, there was a puzzle: how can a magnetofluid consisting of Alfven waves be turbulent? The answer lay in the role of velocity shears in the solarwind that could drive turbulent evolution. Puzzles remain: for example, the power spectrum of the velocity fluctuations is less steep than the slope of the magnetic fluctuations. The plasma in the magnetic tail of Earth's magnetosphere also shows aspects of turbulence, as does the plasma in the dayside magnetosphere near the poles the dayside cusps. Recently, new analyses of high time resolution magnetic field data from Cluster have offered a glimpse of how turbulence is dissipated, thus heating the ambient plasma.

Full Text Available The solarwind serves as a laboratory for investigating magnetohydrodynamic turbulence under conditions irreproducible on the terra firma. Here we show that the frame work of Hall magnetohydrodynamics (HMHD, which can support three quadratic invariants and allows nonlinear states to depart fundamentally from the Alfvénic, is capable of reproducing in the inertial range the three branches of the observed solarwind magnetic fluctuation spectrum - the Kolmogorov branch f -5/3 steepening to f -α1 with on the high frequency side and flattening to f -1 on the low frequency side. These fluctuations are found to be associated with the nonlinear Hall-MHD Shear Alfvén waves. The spectrum of the concomitant whistler type fluctuations is very different from the observed one. Perhaps the relatively stronger damping of the whistler fluctuations may cause their unobservability. The issue of equipartition of energy through the so called Alfvén ratio acquires a new status through its dependence, now, on the spatial scale.

We use solarwind and interplanetary magnetic field data, along with satellite global auroral imagery, to investigate what controls the magnetic local time (MLT) of substorm onset. We find that substorm onsets occur over a wide range of MLTs (18 - 4 hrs), with a typical MLT (mode) of 23 hrs. In agreement with previous studies, IMF BY , acts to move the onset to an earlier/later local time in the northern hemisphere and a later/earlier local time in the southern hemisphere, depending on the sign of BY , consistent with a twist of the conjugate magnetic field line. This effect explains a small fraction of the observed MLT variation (˜ 1 hr), but cannot account for the tendency of onset to be often displaced to earlier ( 23 hrs) MLTs in both hemispheres. We also inspect the relationship between solarwind V Y and onset MLT, which also has a small, but measurable effect on the local time of substorm onset. This effect acts in the same sense in the northern and southern hemispheres, moving onset to earlier times for positive V Y and later times for negative V Y . We find that a function relating both BY and V Y to onset MLT produces a better fit than a function based on either parameter alone.

Using high-speed solarwind data recorded by the Ulysses spacecraft, we investigate and estimate the anisotropic inertial range scaling of the interplanetary magnetic field. We apply the method of the magnetic structure function (MSF), Sn (τ) = lang|b(t + τ) - b(t)| n rang vprop τζ(n), to analyze the scaling of solarwind turbulence over the range from 1 s to 104 s. By sorting the fluctuations according to the direction of the local mean magnetic field, we obtain a second-order structure function in (r, Θ) coordinates that reveals the scale-dependent anisotropy of the power spectrum. The scale-dependent anisotropy of the MSF indicates that the fluctuation energy tends to cascade toward the direction perpendicular to the local field. The dependence of the MSF scaling index ζ on the direction of the local field is found to be similar to that reported in Horbury et al. and Podesta, with ζbottom = 0.53 ± 0.18 and ζpar = 1.00 ± 0.14. Furthermore, we estimate and find the scaling law between the perpendicular and parallel scales r par vprop r 0.614 bottom, which implies the elongation along the parallel direction as the turbulence eddy evolves toward the small lengthscales. These results are in agreement with the predictions of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence theory.

The relevance of the solarwind with the magnetosphere of Jupiter that contains positively charged dust grains is investigated. The perturbation/excitation caused by streaming ions and electron beams from the solarwind could form different nonlinear structures such as rogue waves, depending on the dominant role of the plasma parameters. Using the reductive perturbation method, the basic set of fluid equations is reduced to modified Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) and further modified (KdV) equation. Assuming that the frequency of the carrier wave is much smaller than the ion plasma frequency, these equations are transformed into nonlinear Schrödinger equations with appropriate coefficients. Rational solution of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation shows that rogue wave envelopes are supported by the present plasma model. It is found that the existence region of rogue waves depends on the dust-acoustic speed and the streaming temperatures for both the ions and electrons. The dependence of the maximum rogue wave envelope amplitude on the system parameters has been investigated.

The production factor, or broad band averaged cross-section, for solarwind charge-exchange with hydrogen producing emission in the ROSAT 1/4 keV (R12) band is $3.8\\pm0.2\\times10^{-20}$ count degree$^{-2}$ cm$^4$. This value is derived from a comparison of the Long-Term (background) Enhancements in the ROSAT All-Sky Survey with magnetohysdrodynamic simulations of the magnetosheath. This value is 1.8 to 4.5 times higher than values derived from limited atomic data, suggesting that those values may be missing a large number of faint lines. This production factor is important for deriving the exact amount of 1/4 keV band flux that is due to the Local Hot Bubble, for planning future observations in the 1/4 keV band, and for evaluating proposals for remote sensing of the magnetosheath. The same method cannot be applied to the 3/4 keV band as that band, being composed primarily of the oxygen lines, is far more sensitive to the detailed abundances and ionization balance in the solarwind. We also show, incidentally,...

Full Text Available When a solid object is immersed into ionized gas it gets brought to a certain value of electrostatic potential and surrounded by a space charge region called ‘plasma sheath’. Through this region, particles are attracted or repelled from the surface of the charge collecting object. For collisionless plasma, this process is described by the so-called orbit limited theory, which explains how the collection of particles is determined by the collector geometry and plasma velocity distribution function (VDF. In this article, we provide explicit expressions for orbit-limited currents for generalized Lorentzian (κ distributions. This work is useful to describe the charging processes of objects in non-collisional plasmas like the solarwind, where the electrons VDF is often observed to exhibit quasi power-law populations of suprathermal particles. It is found that these ‘suprathermals’ considerably increase the charge collection. Since the surface charging process that determines the value of electrostatic potential is also affected by the plasma VDF, calculation of the collector potential in the solarwind is described along with some quantitative predictions. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 176002

Full Text Available A model of vortex with embedded discontinuities in plasma flow is developed in the framework of ideal MHD in a low b plasma. Vortex structures are considered as a result of 2-D evolution of nonlinear shear Alfvén waves in the heliosphere. Physical properties of the solutions and vector fields are analyzed and the observational aspects of the model are discussed. The ratio of normal components to the discontinuity Br /Vr can be close to -2. The alignment between velocity and magnetic field vectors takes place. Spacecraft crossing such vortices will typically observe a pair of discontinuities, but with dissimilar properties. Occurrence rate for different discontinuity types is estimated and agrees with observations in high-speed solarwind stream. Discontinuity crossing provides a backward rotation of magnetic field vector and can be observed as part of a backward arc. The Ulysses magnetometer data obtained in the fast solarwind are compared with the results of theoretical modelling.

Particle velocity distributions measured in the weakly collisional solarwind are frequently found to be non-Maxwellian, but how these non-Maxwellian distributions impact the physics of plasma turbulence in the solarwind remains unanswered. Using numerical solutions of the linear dispersion relation for a collisionless plasma with a bi-Maxwellian proton velocity distribution, we present a unified framework for the four proton temperature anisotropy instabilities, identifying the associated stable eigenmodes, highlighting the unstable region of wavevector space and presenting the properties of the growing eigenfunctions. Based on physical intuition gained from this framework, we address how the proton temperature anisotropy impacts the nonlinear dynamics of the Alfvénic fluctuations underlying the dominant cascade of energy from large to small scales and how the fluctuations driven by proton temperature anisotropy instabilities interact nonlinearly with each other and with the fluctuations of the large-scale cascade. We find that the nonlinear dynamics of the large-scale cascade is insensitive to the proton temperature anisotropy and that the instability-driven fluctuations are unlikely to cause significant nonlinear evolution of either the instability-driven fluctuations or the turbulent fluctuations of the large-scale cascade.

Particle velocity distributions measured in the weakly collisional solarwind are frequently found to be non-Maxwellian, but how these non-Maxwellian distributions impact the physics of plasma turbulence in the solarwind remains unanswered. Using numerical solutions of the linear dispersion relation for a collisionless plasma with a bi-Maxwellian proton velocity distribution, we present a unified framework for the four proton temperature anisotropy instabilities, identifying the associated stable eigenmodes, highlighting the unstable region of wavevector space and presenting the properties of the growing eigenfunctions. Based on physical intuition gained from this framework, we address how the proton temperature anisotropy impacts the nonlinear dynamics of the Alfvénic fluctuations underlying the dominant cascade of energy from large to small scales and how the fluctuations driven by proton temperature anisotropy instabilities interact nonlinearly with each other and with the fluctuations of the large-scale cascade. We find that the nonlinear dynamics of the large-scale cascade is insensitive to the proton temperature anisotropy and that the instability-driven fluctuations are unlikely to cause significant nonlinear evolution of either the instability-driven fluctuations or the turbulent fluctuations of the large-scale cascade.

The Sun continuously expels a huge amount of ionized material into interplanetary space as the solarwind. Despite its influence on the heliospheric environment, the origin of the solarwind has yet to be well identified. In this paper, we report Hinode X-ray Telescope observations of a solar active region. At the edge of the active region, located adjacent to a coronal hole, a pattern of continuous outflow of soft-x-ray-emitting plasmas was identified emanating along apparently open magnetic field lines and into the upper corona. Estimates of temperature and density for the outflowing plasmas suggest a mass loss rate that amounts to approximately 1/4 of the total mass loss rate of the solarwind. These outflows may be indicative of one of the solarwind sources at the Sun.

Full Text Available We report characteristics of thermal particle observations during the encounter of the Wind satellite with the separatrix and the outflow domains of a reconnection event on 22 July 1999 in the solarwind. During the studied event the electrostatic analyzers on Wind were transmitting three-dimensional electron and proton distributions in a burst mode every 3 s, the spin period of the spacecraft. The event was associated with a magnetic shear angle of 114° and a large guide magnetic field. The observations suggest that Wind crossed the separatrix and outflow regions about a thousand of ion skin depths from the X-line. At the leading separator boundary, a strong proton beam was identified that originated from the direction of the X-line. In the separatrix and the outflow regions, the phase space distributions of thermal electrons displayed field aligned bidirectional anisotropy. During the crossings of the current sheets bounding the outflow region, we identified two adjacent layers in which the dominant thermal electron flows were towards the X-line at the inner edges of the current sheets and away from the X-line at the outer edges. Interestingly, simulation studies and observations in the Earth's magnetosphere have revealed that the electron flows are reversed, consistent with the Hall current system.

In past studies, we classified the near-Earth solarwind into three basic flow types based on inspection of solarwind plasma and magnetic field parameters in the OMNI database and additional data (e.g., geomagnetic indices, energetic particle, and cosmic ray observations). These flow types are: (1) High-speed streams associated with coronal holes at the Sun, (2) Slow, interstream solarwind, and (3) Transient flows originating with coronal mass ejections at the Sun, including interplanetary coronal mass ejections and the associated upstream shocks and post-shock regions. The solarwind classification in these previous studies commenced with observations in 1972. In the present study, as well as updating this classification to the end of 2011, we have extended the classification back to 1963, the beginning of near-Earth solarwind observations, thereby encompassing the complete solar cycles 20 to 23 and the ascending phase of cycle 24. We discuss the cycle-to-cycle variations in near-Earth solarwind structures and l1e related geomagnetic activity over more than four solar cycles, updating some of the results of our earlier studies.

Full Text Available In past studies, we classified the near-Earth solarwind into three basic flow types based on inspection of solarwind plasma and magnetic field parameters in the OMNI database and additional data (e.g., geomagnetic indices, energetic particle, and cosmic ray observations. These flow types are: (1 High-speed streams associated with coronal holes at the Sun, (2 Slow, interstream solarwind, and (3 Transient flows originating with coronal mass ejections at the Sun, including interplanetary coronal mass ejections and the associated upstream shocks and post-shock regions. The solarwind classification in these previous studies commenced with observations in 1972. In the present study, as well as updating this classification to the end of 2011, we have extended the classification back to 1963, the beginning of near-Earth solarwind observations, thereby encompassing the complete solar cycles 20 to 23 and the ascending phase of cycle 24. We discuss the cycle-to-cycle variations in near-Earth solarwind structures and the related geomagnetic activity over more than four solar cycles, updating some of the results of our earlier studies.

The source of the slow solarwind at the Sun is still an issue of intense debate in solar and heliospheric physics. Because the majority of the solarwind observed at Earth is slow wind, understanding its origin is essential for understanding and predicting Earth’s space weather environment. In-situ and remote observations show that, when compared to the fast wind, the slow solarwind corresponds to higher freeze-in temperatures, as indicated by charge-state ratios, and more corona-like elemental abundance ratios. These results indicate that the most likely source for the slow wind is the hot plasma in the closed-field corona, but the release mechanism(s) for the wind from the closed-field regions is far from understood. We perform fully dynamic, 3D MHD simulations in order to the study the opening and closing of the Sun’s magnetic field that leads to the escape of the slow solarwind. In particular, we calculate the dynamics of helmet streamers that are driven by photospheric motions such as supergranular flows. We determine in detail the opening and closing of coronal flux, and discuss the implications of our results for theories of slow wind origin, especially the S-Web model. We also determine observational signatures for the upcoming inner heliosphere missions Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe Plus.This work was supported by the NASA SR&T and TR&T Programs.

The SolarWind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) Investigation on Solar Probe Plus is a four sensor instrument suite that provides complete measurements of the electrons and ionized helium and hydrogen that constitute the bulk of solarwind and coronal plasma. SWEAP consists of the Solar Probe Cup (SPC) and the Solar Probe Analyzers (SPAN). SPC is a Faraday Cup that looks directly at the Sun and measures ion and electron fluxes and flow angles as a function of energy. SPAN consists of an ion and electron electrostatic analyzer (ESA) on the ram side of SPP (SPAN-A) and an electron ESA on the anti-ram side (SPAN-B). The SPAN-A ion ESA has a time of flight section that enables it to sort particles by their mass/charge ratio, permitting differentiation of ion species. SPAN-A and -B are rotated relative to one another so their broad fields of view combine like the seams on a baseball to view the entire sky except for the region obscured by the heat shield and covered by SPC. Observations by SPC and SPAN produce the combined field of view and measurement capabilities required to fulfill the science objectives of SWEAP and Solar Probe Plus. SWEAP measurements, in concert with magnetic and electric fields, energetic particles, and white light contextual imaging will enable discovery and understanding of solarwind acceleration and formation, coronal and solarwind heating, and particle acceleration in the inner heliosphere of the solar system. SPC and SPAN are managed by the SWEAP Electronics Module (SWEM), which distributes power, formats onboard data products, and serves as a single electrical interface to the spacecraft. SWEAP data products include ion and electron velocity distribution functions with high energy and angular resolution. Full resolution data are stored within the SWEM, enabling high resolution observations of structures such as shocks, reconnection events, and other transient structures to be selected for download after the fact. This paper describes

Full Text Available The paper presents developed methodology of solar and wind energy resources complex mapping at the regional level, taking into account the environmental and socio-economic factors affecting the placement of renewable energy facilities. Methodology provides a reasonable search and allocation of areas, the most promising for the placement of wind and solar power plants.

Some small scale irrigation systems (powered by wind or solar do not require subsidies, but this paper discusses ways to achieve an economical renewable energy powered center pivot irrigation system for crops in the Great Plains. By adding a solar-photovoltaic (PV) array together with a wind...

there are many risks and disadvantages associated with the current grid. According to the Department of Energy (DOE), demand for electricity has...include solar, biomass , wind, geothermal, and water [15]. These resources are naturally regenerative. Photovoltaic (PV) solar cells and wind

To study the effects of interstellar pickup protons and turbulence on the structure and dynamics of the solarwind, we have developed a fully three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic solarwind model that treats interstellar pickup protons as a separate fluid and incorporates the transport of turbulence and turbulent heating. The governing system of equations combines the mean-field equations for the solarwind plasma, magnetic field, and pickup protons and the turbulence transport equations for the turbulent energy, normalized cross-helicity, and correlation length. The model equations account for photoionization of interstellar hydrogen atoms and their charge exchange with solarwind protons, energy transfer from pickup protons to solarwind protons, and plasma heating by turbulent dissipation. Separate mass and energy equations are used for the solarwind and pickup protons, though a single momentum equation is employed under the assumption that the pickup protons are comoving with the solarwind protons.We compute the global structure of the solarwind plasma, magnetic field, and turbulence in the region from 0.3 to 100 AU for a source magnetic dipole on the Sun tilted by 0 deg - .90 deg and compare our results with Voyager 2 observations. The results computed with and without pickup protons are superposed to evaluate quantitatively the deceleration and heating effects of pickup protons, the overall compression of the magnetic field in the outer heliosphere caused by deceleration, and the weakening of corotating interaction regions by the thermal pressure of pickup protons.

In the course of the solar activity cycle both the solarwind velocity and density un- dergo quasi-sinusoidal variations. These longperiodic variations propagate outwards through the interplanetary space for over a year until they finally reach the heliospheric termination shock. The associated variation of the solarwind ram pressure not only influences there the stand-off distance of the termination shock, but also changes the production and the heliospheric distribution of pick-up ions (PUIs). As a consequence, also the production of anomalous cosmic rays (ACRs) related to PUI-fluxes arriving at the shock varies, the propagation of ACRs is influenced and the modulation of the galactic cosmic rays strongly differs. To quantitatively study this scenario we use a a multi-fluid hydrodynamic simulation code to model the interaction of the solar-cycle modulated heliosphere with the interstellar medium. In this code all dynamically rel- evant species are described by separate plasma fluids within a consistent multifluid context. In a first step we describe the solar-cycle induced heliospheric variations by a series of static models, i.e. we discretizised the solar cycle variation of the SW param- eters and let each model for a selected set of SW parameters deliver an asymptotically stable state. Then we restart this procedure for the next set of SW parameters. The ob- tained set of different heliosphere configurations is then taken as envelopping a fully time-dependent model, in which the solar-cycle varying SW parameters are modeled on the basis of actually time-dependent variations. Here we present the results of the static model runs with emphasis on PUI, ACR and GCR distributions. We also will discuss first results of the time-dependent model.

In a previous study (Randol and Christian, submitted to JGR, April 2014), numerical simulations of protons and anti-protons obeying Coulomb's law provided key insight into the self-consistent generation of κ distributions in space plasmas. In that study, the velocity distribution function (VDF) first formed a tail with the common spectral index of -5 and then gradually became a κ-r distribution, with κ = 1.5, corresponding to the common spectrum. The form of this distribution was found to relate to the electric field distribution function (EDF). These results were robust to a range of initialized densities and thermal speeds; however, this range of parameters did not include values close to those of the solarwind at 1 AU. Here we report on simulations of the same type but for a broader range of parameters, including those of the solarwind and corona. Our earliest findings indicate a lack of consistency in the VDF with the common spectrum, the cause of which again lies in the EDF. The results are instructive for understanding the solarwind ion VDF core and tail, as well as for κ distributed plasmas in general.

Existing global models of the solar-wind/IMF expanding to the Earth's orbit are basically grounded in the idea of "source surface." It is widely accepted that the sector structure and the solarwind speed are primarily controlled by the magnetic field at the source surface and the so-called "expansion factor." On the other hand, 3-D MHD model is still off from practical use because both of scientific and technical problems. One of the former problems is the reproduction of supersonic solar-wind. From the viewpoint of the physics of the solarwind, coronal heating and outward acceleration mechanisms are invoked to explain the supersonic evolution of the solarwind. Since the mechanism responsible for the heating/acceleration is still one of the primary subjects of the physics of the solarwind, many MHD models have taken into account their effects by incorporating additional source terms corresponding to promising candidates such as thermal conductions, radiation losses and wave pressures. However there are few MHD models considering the effect of the expansion factor, which determines the solar-wind speed in the series of source surface models. In this study we newly incorporate the flux tube expansion rate into the MHD equation system including heat source function in the energy equation. Appling the unstructured grid system, we achieved the dense grid spacing at the inner boundary, which enable us to adopt realistic solar magnetic fields, and a size of simulation space of 1AU. Photospheric magnetic field data is used as the inner boundary condition.The simulation results are summarized as: (1) The variation of solarwind speed is well controlled by the structure of magnetic fields at and little above the solar surface and (2) Far above the solar surface, the interface between high and low speed flows evolves to a structure suggestive of CIRs. Comparing the data from simulation with the actual solarwind data obtained by spacecrafts, we will discuss the future

The investigation of ion escape fluxes from Mars, resulting from the solarwind interaction with its upper atmosphere/ionosphere, is important due to its potential impact on the long-term evolution of Mars atmosphere (e.g., loss of water) over its history. In the present work, we adopt the 3-D Mars cold neutral atmosphere profiles (0 ~ 300 km) from the newly developed and validated Mars Global Ionosphere Thermosphere Model (M-GITM) and the 3-D hot oxygen profiles (100 km ~ 5 RM) from the exosphere Monte Carlo model Adaptive Mesh Particle Simulator (AMPS). We apply these 3-D model output fields into the 3-D BATS-R-US Mars multi-fluid MHD (MF-MHD) model (100 km ~ 20 RM) that can simulate the interplay between Mars upper atmosphere and solarwind by considering the dynamics of individual ion species. The multi-fluid MHD model solves separate continuity, momentum and energy equations for each ion species (H+, O+, O2+, CO2+). The M-GITM model together with the AMPS exosphere model take into account the effects of solar cycle and seasonal variations on both cold and hot neutral atmospheres. This feature allows us to investigate the corresponding effects on the Mars upper atmosphere ion escape by using a one-way coupling approach, i.e., both the M-GITM and AMPS model output fields are used as the input for the multi-fluid MHD model and the M-GITM is used as input into the AMPS exosphere model. In this study, we present M-GITM, AMPS, and MF-MHD calculations (1-way coupled) for 2.5 GYA conditions and/or extreme solar conditions for present day Mars (high solarwind velocities, high solarwind dynamic pressure, and high solar irradiance conditions, etc.). Present day extreme conditions may result in MF-MHD outputs that are similar to 2.5 GYA cases. The crustal field orientations are also considered in this study. By comparing estimates of past ion escape rates with the current ion loss rates to be returned by the MAVEN spacecraft (2013-2016), we can better constrain the

We present several unusual solar radio events observed by the Wind spacecraft. These events - type II and type III bursts - show significant unexpected time-frequency structure that is likely due to interaction of the electron beam sources with atypical density variations of the solarwind. These events permit us to test our understanding of the emission processes, as well as demonstrating the remote detection of solarwind structure. We will also report on updates to the Wind Waves website at NASA GSFC of interest to radio data users.

We present results from global, three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the solarwind/magnetosphere interaction. These MHD simulations are used to study ultra low frequency (ULF) pulsations in the Earth's magnetosphere driven by shear instabilities at the flanks of the magnetopause. We drive the simulations with idealized, constant solarwind input parameters, ensuring that any discrete ULF pulsations generated in the simulation magnetosphere are not due to fluctuations in the solarwind. The simulations presented in this study are driven by purely southward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) conditions, changing only the solarwind driving velocity while holding all of the other solarwind input parameters constant. We find surface waves near the dawn and dusk flank magnetopause and show that these waves are generated by the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability. We also find that two KH modes are generated near the magnetopause boundary. One mode, the magnetopause KH mode, propagates tailwa...

Eight and a half years of magnetic field measurements (2(22) samples) from the ACE spacecraft in the solarwind at 1 A.U. are analyzed. Strong (large-rotation-angle) discontinuities in the solarwind are collected and measured. An artificial time series is created that preserves the timing and amplitudes of the discontinuities. The power spectral density of the discontinuity series is calculated and compared with the power spectral density of the solar-wind magnetic field. The strong discontinuities produce a power-law spectrum in the "inertial subrange" with a spectral index near the Kolmogorov -5/3 index. The discontinuity spectrum contains about half of the power of the full solar-wind magnetic field over this "inertial subrange." Warnings are issued about the significant contribution of discontinuities to the spectrum of the solarwind, complicating interpretation of spectral power and spectral indices.

We present a statistical study of propagation times of solarwind discontinuities between Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft orbiting the L1 libration point and the Cluster quartet of spacecraft near the Earth's magnetopause. The propagation times for almost 200 events are compared with the predicted times from four different models. The simplest model assumes a constant convective motion of solarwind disturbances along the Sun-Earth line, whereas more sophisticated models take the orientation of the discontinuity as well as the real positions of the solarwind monitor and target into account. The results show that taking orientation and real position of the solarwind monitor and target into account gives a more precise time delay estimation in most cases. In particular, we show that recent modifications to the minimum variance technique can improve the estimation of propagation times of solarwind discontinuities. (orig.)

The electric grid is a highly complex, interconnected machine, and changing one part of the grid can have consequences elsewhere. Adding wind and solar affects the operation of the other power plants and adding high penetrations can induce cycling of fossil-fueled generators. Cycling leads to wear-and-tear costs and changes in emissions. Phase 2 of the Western Wind and Solar Integration Study (WWSIS-2) evaluated these costs and emissions and simulated grid operations for a year to investigate the detailed impact of wind and solar on the fossil-fueled fleet. This built on Phase 1, one of the largest wind and solar integration studies ever conducted, which examined operational impacts of high wind and solar penetrations in the West(GE Energy 2010).

Full Text Available We present a statistical study of propagation times of solarwind discontinuities between Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE spacecraft orbiting the L1 libration point and the Cluster quartet of spacecraft near the Earth's magnetopause. The propagation times for almost 200 events are compared with the predicted times from four different models. The simplest model assumes a constant convective motion of solarwind disturbances along the Sun-Earth line, whereas more sophisticated models take the orientation of the discontinuity as well as the real positions of the solarwind monitor and target into account. The results show that taking orientation and real position of the solarwind monitor and target into account gives a more precise time delay estimation in most cases. In particular, we show that recent modifications to the minimum variance technique can improve the estimation of propagation times of solarwind discontinuities.

Characterised by a surface bound exosphere and localised crustal magnetic fields, the Moon was considered as a passive object when solarwind interacts with it. However, the neutral particle and plasma measurements around the Moon by recent dedicated lunar missions, such as Chandrayaan-1, Kaguya, Chang'E-1, LRO, and ARTEMIS, as well as IBEX have revealed a variety of phenomena around the Moon which results from the interaction with solarwind, such as backscattering of solarwind protons as energetic neutral atoms (ENA) from lunar surface, sputtering of atoms from the lunar surface, formation of a "mini-magnetosphere" around lunar magnetic anomaly regions, as well as several plasma populations around the Moon, including solarwind protons scattered from the lunar surface, from the magnetic anomalies, pick-up ions, protons in lunar wake and more. This paper provides a review of these recent findings and presents the interaction of solarwind with the Moon in a new perspective.

Characterised by a surface bound exosphere and localised crustal magnetic fields, the Moon was considered as a passive object when solarwind interacts with it. However, the neutral particle and plasma measurements around the Moon by recent dedicated lunar missions, such as Chandrayaan-1, Kaguya, Chang'E-1, LRO, and ARTEMIS, as well as IBEX have revealed a variety of phenomena around the Moon which results from the interaction with solarwind, such as backscattering of solarwind protons as energetic neutral atoms (ENA) from lunar surface, sputtering of atoms from the lunar surface, formation of a "mini-magnetosphere" around lunar magnetic anomaly regions, as well as several plasma populations around the Moon, including solarwind protons scattered from the lunar surface, from the magnetic anomalies, pick-up ions, protons in lunar wake and more. This paper provides a review of these recent findings and presents the interaction of solarwind with the Moon in a new perspective.

A new technique has made it possible to measure the velocity of portions of the solarwind during its flow outward from the sun. This analysis utilizes spacecraft (ISEE-3) observations of radio emission generated in regions of the solarwind associated with solar active regions. By tracking the source of these radio waves over periods of days, it is possible to measure the motion of the emission regions. Evidence of solarwind acceleration during this outward flow, consistent with theoretical models, has also been obtained.

Previous research has been conducted to investigate the effect of the low-level wind region on summertime convective storms in the east central Florida area. These effects were described by analyzing the distribution of lightning flashes within classifications based on the low-level windregime for the months June through September of 1987 to 1990. The present research utilizes the same classification strategy to study rainfall patterns for data gathered for the CaPE (Convection and Precipitation/Electrification Experiment) field program. The CaPE field program was conducted in east central Florida from July 8, 1991 to August 18, 1991.

A significant obstacle to the widespread use of wind and solar energy is the high variability. While this obstacle is significant for a small area, because of the possibility of low wind and solar energy production for a significant period every year, over larger areas renewable energy production can make use of the fact that there will always be wind or solar energy available somewhere in the domain. A key scientific question is how large does an area have to be such that wind and solar can supply significant electricity production without large shortages? Results will be presented from a study that exams whether the continental US has enough areal scale such that the weather can drive large-scale wind and solar deployment? The study uses assimilated hourly weather data for 2006-8 and hourly electric load projected from 2006-8 to 2030. An optimization model developed for this study evaluates the cost of the national system when taking into account not only the cost of wind turbines and solar panels but also the costs of building the electricity producing stations, building the transmission lines, allowing for transmission losses and the fuel burned in the dispatch-able generation. While some results from this study are intuitive, others give surprising insights relevant to planning energy systems of the future. We show that wind and solar energy utilization increases with domain size, while the total atmospheric carbon release and total system costs are subsequently reduced. We show that transmission constraints do not significantly alter the utilization of wind and solar deployment, however, transmission dramatically affect the areal locations of the wind and solar generation plants. A similar scaling for global land and adjacent coastal areas, with no transmission constraints, shows that wind and solar energy systems are most effective on large geographic areas. The optimization model will be explained in greater detail and key results will be shared.

This paper describes categories of solar technologies and identifies those that are economic. It compares the private costs of power from solar, wind, nuclear, coal, oil, and gas generators. In the southern United States, the private costs of building and generating electricity from new solar and wind power plants are less than the private cost of electricity from a new nuclear power plant. Solar power is more valuable than nuclear power since all solar power is available during peak and midpeak periods. Half of the power from nuclear generators is off-peak power and therefore is less valuable. Reliability is important in determining the value of wind and nuclear power. Damage from air pollution, when factored into the cost of power from fossil fuels, alters the cost comparison in favor of solar and wind power. Some policies are more effective at encouraging alternative energy technologies that pollute less and improve national security.

Co-rotating interaction regions (CIRs) and their associated shock pairs are dominant structures in the solarwind between the heliocentric distances of 2 and 8 AU. At larger heliocentric distances, these structures undergo a qualitative change. Shocks decay to a point where they are often difficult to detect, and may have little influence on the dynamics of the solarwind. Interaction regions spread and merge, though they appear to retain their identity to surprisingly large distances from the Sun. Solarwind and IMF data from the Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, and Voyager 2 spacecraft were used to conduct a comprehensive survey of CIRs and their successors between heliocentric distances of 1 and 55 AU over the last two solar cycles. The structure of the solarwind varied in a consistent fashion with heliocentric distance. Similar structures were observed at similar heliocentric distances by all three spacecraft during different portions of the solar cycle.

We have developed a three-fluid, three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic solarwind model that incorporates turbulence transport, eddy viscosity, turbulent resistivity, and turbulent heating. The solarwind plasma is described as a system of co-moving solarwind protons, electrons, and interstellar pickup protons, with separate energy equations for each species. Numerical steady-state solutions of Reynolds-averaged solarwind equations coupled with turbulence transport equations for turbulence energy, cross helicity, and correlation length are obtained by the time relaxation method in the corotating with the Sun frame of reference in the region from 0.3 to 100 AU (but still inside the termination shock). The model equations include the effects of electron heat conduction, Coulomb collisions, photoionization of interstellar hydrogen atoms and their charge exchange with the solarwind protons, turbulence energy generation by pickup protons, and turbulent heating of solarwind protons and electrons. The turbulence transport model is based on the Reynolds decomposition and turbulence phenomenologies that describe the conversion of fluctuation energy into heat due to a turbulent cascade. In addition to using separate energy equations for the solarwind protons and electrons, a significant improvement over our previous work is that the turbulence model now uses an eddy viscosity approximation for the Reynolds stress tensor and the mean turbulent electric field. The approximation allows the turbulence model to account for driving of turbulence by large-scale velocity gradients. Using either a dipole approximation for the solar magnetic field or synoptic solar magnetograms from the Wilcox Solar Observatory for assigning boundary conditions at the coronal base, we apply the model to study the global structure of the solarwind and its three-dimensional properties, including embedded turbulence, heating, and acceleration throughout the heliosphere. The model results are

Full Text Available A theoretical model is proposed to account for some of the behavior of arc-polarized magnetic structures seen in the solarwind. To this end, an exact analytical solution is developed that describes infinite plane wave trains of arbitrary amplitude in a plasma governed by ideal Hall MHD. The main focus is on intermediate-mode wave trains, which display double-branched magnetic hodogram signatures similar to those seen in the solarwind. The theoretically derived hodograms have field rotation in the ion-polarized sense at a slightly depressed field magnitude on one branch and an electron-polarized rotation at a slightly enhanced field magnitude on the other branch. The two branches are joined at the two "turning points", at which the normal flow is exactly Alfvénic. The behavior is accounted for in terms of the opposite dispersive properties of ion and electron whistlers. The hodograms derived from the theory are shown to compare favorably with those of one event, observed by the Cluster spacecraft near the ecliptic plane, and one event at high heliographic latitude observed by the Ulysses spacecraft. However, these two observed structures comprise only a single full wave period, approximately from one turning point to the other and then back again. The theory can be used to predict propagation direction (away from, or towards, the sun from magnetic data alone, provided the sign of the magnetic field component along the wave normal can be reliably determined. Under the same condition, it also predicts whether the ion-polarized branch should precede or follow the electron-polarized branch. Both behaviors are seen in the solarwind. The major shortcoming of the theory is that it fails to reproduce the observed saw-tooth like time series for the magnetic field, in which the field rotation is rapid in the ion sense and slow in the electron sense. Instead, the theory gives about the same rotation rates. Possible explanations for this discrepancy are

Magnetospheric substorm commonly supposed to consist of two stages, loading and unloading. During the first stage the magnetic energy is stored in the magnetotail, which leads to increasing of the magnetic field intensity in the lobes and electric currents in the plasma sheet. The next uloading stage usually related to the reconnection process, which releases accumulated magnetic energy and produces the bursty bulk flows (BBFs) in the magnetotail. Such a scheme has been confirmed from both experimental and theoretical points of view. The weakest point of this scheme is the physical conditions which are necessary for the onset of the reconnection, but although the huge number of investigations was made to this end. Among them substorm triggers such as pressure pulses, turning of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) to the north direction and so on. We would like to emphasize the role of the bent current sheets first proposed by Kivelson and Hughes in 1990. The idea is that in the asymmetric configurations gradients and current density growth, so these conditions are supposed to be favorable for the reconnection. Then the minimal stress of the system can lead to the substorm onset. In the presented study we have analyzed the possibility of the current sheet asymmetry to be the trigger in theory and in observations (by statistical analysis of substorm occurrences). The bent of the current sheet can be produced by different sources. The most evident of them are the dipole tilt angle variations and the changes of the solarwind direction. The first source, tilt variations, are slow, so in the current study we at first analyzed the fast changes of the solarwind. The experimental analysis includes the investigation of the number of the events against dipole tilt angle and the solarwind direction, which both produce the distortion and inclination of the dipole current sheet. Theoretical investigation of this issue is based on the analysis of the quasi

Full Text Available Low solarwind density with long duration was measured by in situ observation between 11 and 12 May 1999. As a result of this low-density solarwind condition, the magnetosphere of the Earth expanded considerably. We used a database of one-hour-averaged solarwind (1963–1999 near 1 AU to determine whether or not the observed low-density event was extremely abnormal. As a result it was found that this event has the longest duration in approximately 36 years of solarwind observations. There are three events with density 0.5 cm-3 or less and duration ten hours or longer. They were observed on 4 and 31 July 1979, and 11–12 May 1999. The 4 July 1979 event recurred on 31 July 1979. The events were characterized by low-beta, low Alfven Mach number (MA , and low dynamic pressure. The occurrence rate of low-density solarwind with density 0.5 cm-3 or less shows several peaks near solar maxima. However, it is difficult to find a clear relationship between the sunspot number and the occurrence rate.

Measurements made by the Isee 3 ion composition experiment have been used to determine the kinetic temperatures of 3He(++), 4He(++), 16O(6+), and 16O(7+) in the solarwind. It is found that these temperatures generally obey the relation that T(i)/m(i) equals const, but fluctuations, some of which are caused by dynamical effects in the flow, are observed. The temperature of oxygen sometimes rises above 10 K, which is very strong evidence for heating outside the collisional region of the corona. The tendency toward equal temperatures per nucleon occurs everywhere where collisions are unimportant, suggesting that the temperatures are set up close to the sun rather than elsewhere in the interplanetary medium. The velocity distribution function of helium is observed to be non-Maxwellian, with a pronounced high velocity tail.

High resolution ISEE-3 data have been used to examine the relative abundances of tangential (TD) vs rotational (RD) discontinuities in different types of solarwind flow. Three types of flow were examined; flow from coronal holes, sector boundary flow and transient flow. It has been found that coronal hole flow has substantially more discontinuities and a greater ratio of RD's to TD's than do the other types of flow. Discontinuities are least frequent in transient flows characterized by bidirectional streaming of electrons. This leads us to the conclusion that meaningful studies of the velocity dependence of the rates of occurrence of different types of discontinuities must take the type of flow (coronal hole versus transient) into account. 7 refs., 3 figs., 1 tab.

A fully electromagnetic lower hybrid instability which is driven by a resonant halo electron component is studied analytically. It is shown that the growth rate of the instability peaks at a certain value of the wave-number and that an increase in the ratio of electron pressure to magnetic field pressure reduces the growth rate. At 0.3 AU the typical growth time for the instability is found to be of the order of 25 ms or less, whereas the most unstable wavelengths associated with the instability fall typically in a range of 27 to 90 km. Relevance of electromagnetic lower hybrid instability to the obliquely propagating whistler, characterized by large values of refractive indices, detected behind interplanetary shocks in the solarwind and to the generation mechanism of correlated whistler and electron-plasma oscillation bursts detected on ISEE-3 are discussed. 17 references.

We have measured, for the first time, the three-dimensional structure of inertial range plasma turbulence in the fast solarwind with respect to a local, physically motivated coordinate system. We found that the incompressible Alfvenic fluctuations are three-dimensionally anisotropic, with the sense of this anisotropy changing from large to small scales. At the largest scales, the magnetic field correlations are longest in the local fluctuation direction, consistent with Alfven waves. At the smallest scales, they are longest along the local mean field direction and shortest in the direction perpendicular to the local mean field and the local field fluctuation. The compressive fluctuations are highly elongated along the local mean magnetic field direction, although axially symmetric perpendicular to it. Their large anisotropy may explain why they are not heavily damped.

We motivate the importance of studying kinetic scale turbulence for understanding the macroscopic properties of the heliosphere, such as the heating of the solarwind. We then discuss the technique by which kinetic scale density fluctuations can be measured using the spacecraft potential, including a calculation of the timescale for the spacecraft potential to react to the density changes. Finally, we compare the shape of the density spectrum at ion scales to theoretical predictions based on a cascade model for kinetic turbulence. We conclude that the shape of the spectrum, including the ion scale flattening, can be captured by the sum of passive density fluctuations at large scales and kinetic Alfven wave turbulence at small scales.

Describing the solarwind termination shock as a multi-fluid MHD Rankine-Hugoniot shock structure, it is usually assumed that electrons and protons experience identical jumps in density and pressure at the plasma passage over the shock. When analysing the specific kinetic conditions for electrons and ions at this MHD shock crossing, we find that electrons react very much different from protons at their shock passage undergoing an over-adiabatic heating due to conversion of electrically induced overshoot energies into downstream thermal energies. In case of an electron-proton two-fluid plasma, electrons constitute the dominant contribution to the downstream thermal plasma pressure and thereby determine the resulting compression ratio at the shock. We show that taking this over-adiabatic electron heating into account will then deliver a correct representation of all shock data taken with VOYAGER-2.

This paper summarises some of the recent progress that has been made in understanding astrophysical plasma turbulence in the solarwind, from in situ spacecraft observations. At large scales, where the turbulence is predominantly Alfvenic, measurements of critical balance, residual energy, and 3D structure are discussed, along with comparison to recent models of strong Alfvenic turbulence. At these scales, a few percent of the energy is also in compressive fluctuations, and their nature, anisotropy, and relation to the Alfvenic component is described. In the small scale kinetic range, below the ion gyroscale, the turbulence becomes predominantly kinetic Alfven in nature, and measurements of the spectra, anisotropy, and intermittency of this turbulence are discussed with respect to recent cascade models. One of the major remaining questions is how the turbulent energy is dissipated, and some recent work on this question, in addition to future space missions which will help to answer it, are briefly discussed.

Genesis solarwind collectors were comprised of a suite of 15 types of ultrapure materials. The single crystal, pure silicon collectors were fabricated by two methods: float zone (FZ) and Czochralski (CZ). Because of slight differences in bulk purity and surface cleanliness among the fabrication processes and the specific vendor, it is desirable to know which variety of silicon and identity of vendor, so that appropriate reference materials can be used. The Czochralski method results in a bulk composition with slightly higher oxygen, for example. The CZ silicon array wafers that were Genesis-flown were purchased from MEMC Electronics. Most of the Genesis-flown FZ silicon was purchased from Unisil and cleaned by MEMC, although a few FZ wafers were acquired from International Wafer Service (IWS).

This paper gives a brief outline of the progression from the first substorm model developed in Ref.[4] and [8] based on Kennel's ideas[3], to the present views about the mechanism by which solarwind kinetic energy is converted to electromagnetic energy at the Bow Shock and by which this energy is transferred to the magnetosphere in the form of current; about the transformation of the energy of this current to gas kinetic energy of convecting plasma tubes, and, finally, the back transformation of gas kinetic energy to electromagnetic energy in secondary magnetospheric MHD generators. The questions of the formation of the magnetospheric convection system, the nature of substorm break-up, and of the matching of currents in the magnetosphere-ionosphere system are discussed.

The role of compressible fluctuations in the energy cascade of fast solarwind turbulence is studied using a reduced form of an exact law derived recently (Banerjee and Galtier, PRE, 2013) for compressible isothermal magnetohydrodynamics and in-situ observations from the THEMIS B/ARTEMIS P1 spacecraft. A statistical survey of the data revealed a turbulent energy cascade over two decades of scales, which is broader than the previous estimates made from an exact incompressible law. A term-by-term analysis of the compressible model reveals new insight into the role played by the compressible fluctuations in the energy cascade. The compressible fluctuations are shown to amplify (2 to 4 times) the turbulent cascade rate with respect to the incompressible model in 10 % of the analyzed samples. This new estimated cascade rate is shown to provide the adequate energy dissipation required.

Full Text Available The ability for an aircraft to fly during a much extended period of time has become a key issue and a target of research, both in the domain of civilian aviation and unmanned aerial vehicles. This paper describes a new design and evaluating of solarwind aircraft with the objective to assess the impact of a new system design on overall flight crew performance. The required endurance is in the range of some hours in the case of law enforcement, border surveillance, forest fire fighting or power line inspection. However, other applications at high altitudes, such as geomatic operations for delivering geographic information, weather research and forecast, environmental monitoring, would require remaining airborne during days, weeks or even months. The design of GNSS non precision approach procedure for different airports is based on geomatic data.

The role of compressible uctuations in the energy cascade of fast solarwind turbulence is studiedusing an exact law derived recently for compressible isothermal magnetohydrodynamics and in-situobservations of the THEMIS spacecraft. For the first time, a direct turbulent energy cascade isevidenced over three decades of scales which is signicantly broader than the previous estimatesmade from an exact incompressible law or from a compressible heuristic model. Unlike previousworks, our evaluation gives an energy ux which keeps a constant sign over the inertial range. Aterm-by-term analysis reveals that the dominant contribution to the energy ux comes from purecompressible uctuations. Furthermore, the compressible turbulent cascade rate is shown to providethe adequate energy dissipation required to account for the local heating of the non-adiabatic solarwind.

The solarwind speed time series data from 1st January, 1997 to 28th October, 2003 has been pre-processed using simple exponential smoothing, discrete wavelet transform for denoising to investigate the underneath dynamics of it. Recurrence plot and recurrence quantification analysis has revealed that the time series is non-stationary one with deterministic chaotic behavior. The Hilbert-Huang Transform has been used in search of the underlying periods of the data series. Present investigation has revealed the periods of 21 days, 32.5 days, 43.6 days, 148.86 days, 180.7 days, 355.5 days, 403.2 days, 413.6 days, 490.72 days, 729.6 days, 1086.76 days, 1599.4 days and 1892.6 days.

A key prediction of turbulence theories is frame-invariance, and in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, axisymmetry of fluctuations with respect to the background magnetic field. Paradoxically the power in fluctuations in the turbulent solarwind are observed to be ordered with respect to the bulk macroscopic flow as well as the background magnetic field. Here, non- axisymmetry across the inertial and dissipation ranges is quantified using in-situ observations from Cluster. The observed inertial range non- axisymmetry is reproduced by a 'fly through' sampling of a Direct Numerical Simulation of MHD turbulence. Furthermore, 'fly through' sampling of a linear superposition of transverse waves with axisymmetric fluctuations generates the trend in non- axisymmetry with power spectral exponent. The observed non-axisymmetric anisotropy may thus simply arise as a sampling effect related to Taylor's hypothesis and is not related to the plasma dynamics itself.

The authors have investigated the response of particles, in the energy range approximately 1-5000 MeV, to interplanetary shocks and coronal ejecta. Shocks can accelerate particles or cause decreases in particle densities. Ejecta cause decreases. Thus particle observations can provide information about solarwind disturbances. Of particular interest is that the boundaries of ejecta can often be more readily identified from approximately l GeV particle decrease observations than from most other phenomena associated with ejecta. The authors will discuss the properties of less energetic shocks and ejecta and compare them with those of the more energetic events which are normally discussed in the context of Forbush decreases, large proton events, etc. They use data from both Helios spacecraft and IMP 8 which allows some spatial variations to be studied.

Here, we evaluate a modified version of the Park wake model against power data from a west-east row in the middle of the Horns Rev I offshore wind farm. The evaluation is performed on data classified in four different atmospheric stability conditions, for a narrow wind speed range, and a wide ran....... The simulations do not approach the limits of the infinite wind farm under any stability condition as winds are not parallel to the row....

Stellar winds from active solar-type stars can play a crucial role in removal of stellar angular momentum and erosion of planetary atmospheres. However, major wind properties except for mass-loss rates cannot be directly derived from observations. We employed a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic Alfvén wave driven solarwind model, ALF3D, to reconstruct the solarwind parameters including the mass-loss rate, terminal velocity, and wind temperature at 0.7, 2, and 4.65 Gyr. Our model treats the wind thermal electrons, protons, and pickup protons as separate fluids and incorporates turbulence transport, eddy viscosity, turbulent resistivity, and turbulent heating to properly describe proton and electron temperatures of the solarwind. To study the evolution of the solarwind, we specified three input model parameters, the plasma density, Alfvén wave amplitude, and the strength of the dipole magnetic field at the wind base for each of three solarwind evolution models that are consistent with observational constrains. Our model results show that the velocity of the paleo solarwind was twice as fast, ∼50 times denser and 2 times hotter at 1 AU in the Sun's early history at 0.7 Gyr. The theoretical calculations of mass-loss rate appear to be in agreement with the empirically derived values for stars of various ages. These results can provide realistic constraints for wind dynamic pressures on magnetospheres of (exo)planets around the young Sun and other active stars, which is crucial in realistic assessment of the Joule heating of their ionospheres and corresponding effects of atmospheric erosion.

Stellar winds from active solar-type stars can play a crucial role in removal of stellar angular momentum and erosion of planetary atmospheres. However, major wind properties except for mass-loss rates cannot be directly derived from observations. We employed a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic Alfvén wave driven solarwind model, ALF3D, to reconstruct the solarwind parameters including the mass-loss rate, terminal velocity, and wind temperature at 0.7, 2, and 4.65 Gyr. Our model treats the wind thermal electrons, protons, and pickup protons as separate fluids and incorporates turbulence transport, eddy viscosity, turbulent resistivity, and turbulent heating to properly describe proton and electron temperatures of the solarwind. To study the evolution of the solarwind, we specified three input model parameters, the plasma density, Alfvén wave amplitude, and the strength of the dipole magnetic field at the wind base for each of three solarwind evolution models that are consistent with observational constrains. Our model results show that the velocity of the paleo solarwind was twice as fast, ∼50 times denser and 2 times hotter at 1 AU in the Sun's early history at 0.7 Gyr. The theoretical calculations of mass-loss rate appear to be in agreement with the empirically derived values for stars of various ages. These results can provide realistic constraints for wind dynamic pressures on magnetospheres of (exo)planets around the young Sun and other active stars, which is crucial in realistic assessment of the Joule heating of their ionospheres and corresponding effects of atmospheric erosion.

Full Text Available It is well known that the solarwind plasma consists of primary ions of solar coronal origin and secondary ions of interstellar origin. Interstellar H-atoms penetrate into the inner heliosphere and when ionized there are converted into secondary ions. These are implanted into the magnetized solarwind flow and are essentially enforced to co-move with this flow. By nonlinear interactions with wind-entrained Alfvén waves the latter are processed in the co-moving velocity space. This pick-up process, however, also causes actions back upon the original solarwind flow, leading to a deceleration, as well as a heating of the solarwind plasma. The resulting deceleration is not only due to the loading effect, but also due to the action of the pressure gradient. To calculate the latter, it is important to take into account the stochastic acceleration that suffers at their convection out of the inner heliosphere by the quasi-linear interactions with MHD turbulences. Only then can the presently reported VOYAGER observations of solarwind decelerations and heatings in the outer heliosphere be understood in terms of the current, most likely values of interstellar gas parameters. In a consistent view of the thermodynamics of the solarwind plasma, which is composed of secondary ions and solarwind protons, we also derive that the latter are globally heated at their motion to larger solar distances. The arising heat transfer is due to the action of suprathermal ions which drive MHD waves that are partially absorbed by solarwind protons and thereby establish their observed quasi-polytropy. We obtain a quantitative expression for the solarwind proton pressure as a function of solar distance. This expression clearly shows the change from an adiabatic to a quasi-polytropic behaviour with a decreasing polytropic index at increasing distances, as has been observed by the VOYAGERS. This also allows one to calculate the average percentage of the intitial energy

Full Text Available The probability distributions of field differences ∆x(τ=x(t+τ-x(t, where the variable x(t may denote any solarwind scalar field or vector field component at time t, have been calculated from time series of Helios data obtained in 1976 at heliocentric distances near 0.3 AU. It is found that for comparatively long time lag τ, ranging from a few hours to 1 day, the differences are normally distributed according to a Gaussian. For shorter time lags, of less than ten minutes, significant changes in shape are observed. The distributions are often spikier and narrower than the equivalent Gaussian distribution with the same standard deviation, and they are enhanced for large, reduced for intermediate and enhanced for very small values of ∆x. This result is in accordance with fluid observations and numerical simulations. Hence statistical properties are dominated at small scale τ by large fluctuation amplitudes that are sparsely distributed, which is direct evidence for spatial intermittency of the fluctuations. This is in agreement with results from earlier analyses of the structure functions of ∆x. The non-Gaussian features are differently developed for the various types of fluctuations. The relevance of these observations to the interpretation and understanding of the nature of solarwind magnetohydrodynamic (MHD turbulence is pointed out, and contact is made with existing theoretical concepts of intermittency in fluid turbulence.

The electric solarwind sail (E-Sail) is a new propulsion method for interplanetary travel which was invented in 2006 and is currently under development. The E-Sail uses charged tethers to extract momentum from the solarwind particles to obtain propulsive thrust. According to current estimates, the E-Sail is 2-3 orders of magnitude better than traditional propulsion methods (chemical rockets and ion engines) in terms of produced lifetime-integrated impulse per propulsion system mass. Here we analyze the problem of using the E-Sail for directly deflecting an Earth-threatening asteroid. The problem then culminates into how to attach the E-Sail device to the asteroid. We assess alternative attachment strategies, namely straightforward direct towing with a cable and the gravity tractor method which works for a wider variety of situations. We also consider possible techniques to scale up the E-Sail force beyond the baseline one Newton level to deal with more imminent or larger asteroid or cometary threats. As a baseline case we consider an asteroid of effective diameter of 140 m and mass of 3 million tons, which can be deflected with a baseline 1 N E-Sail within 10 years. With a 5 N E-Sail the deflection could be achieved in 5 years. Once developed, the E-Sail would appear to provide a safe and reasonably low-cost way of deflecting dangerous asteroids and other heavenly bodies in cases where the collision threat becomes known several years in advance.

Full Text Available Electrons with energy of ~40–80 eV measured by the instrument ASPERA-3 on Mars Express and MAG-ER onboard Mars Global Surveyor are used to trace an access of solarwind electrons into the Martian magnetosphere. Crustal magnetic fields create an additional protection from solarwind plasma on the dayside of the Southern Hemisphere by shifting the boundary of the induced magnetosphere (this boundary is often refereed as the magnetic pileup boundary above strong crustal sources to ~400 km as compared to the Northern Hemisphere. Localized intrusions through cusps are also observed. On the nightside an access into the magnetosphere depends on the IMF orientation. Negative values of the ByIMF component assist the access to the regions with strong crustal magnetizations although electron fluxes are strongly weakened below ~600 km. A precipitation pattern at lower altitudes is formed by intermittent regions with reduced and enhanced electron fluxes. The precipitation sites are longitudinally stretched narrow bands in the regions with a strong vertical component of the crustal field. Fluxes ≥109 cm−2 s−1 of suprathermal electrons necessary to explain the observed aurora emissions are maintained only for the periods with enhanced precipitation. The appearance of another class of electron distributions – inverted V structures, characterized by peaks on energy spectra, is controlled by the IMF. They are clustered in the hemisphere pointed by the interplanetary electric field that implies a constraint on their origin.

We describe a model initially presented by Sittler et al. [2006] which attempts to explain the global response of Saturn's magnetosphere and its corresponding auroral behavior to variations in the solarwind. The model was derived from published simultaneous Hubble Space Telescope (HST) auroral images and Cassini upstream measurements taken during the month of January 2004. These observations show a direct correlation between solarwind dynamic pressure and (1) auroral brightening toward dawn local time, (2) an increase of rotational movement of auroral features to as much as 75% of the corotation speed, (3) the movement of the auroral oval to higher latitudes and (4) an increase in the intensity of Saturn Kilometric Radiation (SKR). This model is an alternative to the reconnection model of Cowley et al. [2004a,b; 2005] which is more Earth-like while ours stresses rotation. If angular momentum is conserved in a global sense, then when compressed the magnetosphere will tend to spin up and when it expands will tend to spin down. With the plasma sheet outer boundary at L approximates 15 we argue this region to be the dominant source region for the precipitating particles. If radial transport is dominated by centrifugal driven flux tube interchange motions, then when the magnetosphere spins up, outward transport will increase, the precipitating particles will move radially outward and cause the auroral oval to move to higher latitudes as observed. The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability may contribute to the enhanced emission along the dawn meridian as observed by HST. We present this model in the context of presently published observations by Cassini.

Observations have established that about 20% of the solarwind (SW) is reflected and 80% directly transmitted across Earth's bow shock (Skopke et al, Adv. Space Sci., 15, No. 8/9, 269, 1995). The transmitted SW is not immediately thermalized and the magnetosheath plasma distribution can remain non-Maxwellian for a long time. Cluster observations have further established that most of the magnetosheath bulk flow remains super-Alfvenic except in the polar altitudes near the cusp region (Longmore et al., Anna. Geophysicae, 23, 3351-3364, 2005). We have studied SW ion distributions before and after entering the bow shock to examine the details of the solarwind-bow shock interaction. Preliminary findings indicate that a typical SW H+ beam with thermal kT ~10 eV drifting at 400 km/s in front of the bow shock appears as ~12 eV beam drifting at 250 km/s after it penetrates the shock barrier. The small kT increase is possibly due to wave-particle interaction at the boundary. While the He++ ion beam kT behaves similarly as H+ ions, the drift velocities of He++ ions do not always slow down as H+ ions. These observations indicate the physics of SW-bow shock interaction is much more complicated than the models that explain SW slow down as resulting from an electrostatic potential at the shock that decelerates the SW. We have started PIC simulation of SW transport across the bow shock and the results will be presented together with observations.

We analyze the Rontgen satellite (ROSAT) position sensitive proportional counter soft X-ray image of the Moon taken on 29 June 1990 by examining the radial profile of the surface brightness in three wedges: two 19 deg wedges (one north and one south) 13-32 deg off the terminator toward the dark side and one wedge 38 deg wide centered on the antisolar direction. The radial profiles of both the north and the south wedges show significant limb brightening that is absent in the 38 deg wide antisolar wedge. An analysis of the soft X-ray intensity increase associated with the limb brightening shows that its magnitude is consistent with that expected due to solarwind charge exchange (SWCX) with the tenuous lunar atmosphere based on lunar exospheric models and hybrid simulation results of solarwind access beyond the terminator. Soft X-ray imaging thus can independently infer the total lunar limb column density including all species, a property that before now has not been measured, and provide a large-scale picture of the solarwind-lunar interaction. Because the SWCX signal appears to be dominated by exospheric species arising from solarwind implantation, this technique can also determine how the exosphere varies with solarwind conditions. Now, along with Mars, Venus, and Earth, the Moon represents another solar system body at which SWCX has been observed.

Full Text Available In the current research, the work concentrated on studying the effect of curvature of solar parabolic trough solar collector on wind loading coefficients and dynamic response of solar collector. The response of collector to the aerodynamic loading was estimated numerically and experimentally. The curvature of most public parabolic trough solar collectors was investigated and compared. The dynamic response of solar collector due to wind loading was investigated by using numerical solution of fluid-structure interaction concept. The experimental work was done to verify the numerical results and shows good agreement with numerical results. The numerical results were obtained by using finite element software package (ANSYS 14. It was found that the change in collector curvature (focal length lead to remarkable changes in wind loading coefficients (drag, lift, and moment, dynamic response (displacement and natural frequencies but does not affect the first mode shape.

In situ observations of the solarwind frequently show the temperature of $\\alpha$-particles (fully ionized helium), $T_\\alpha$, to significantly differ from that of protons (ionized hydrogen), $T_p$. Many heating processes in the plasma act preferentially on $\\alpha$-particles, even as collisions among ions act to gradually establish thermal equilibrium. Measurements from the $\\textit{Wind}$ spacecraft's Faraday cups reveal that, at $r=1.0\\ \\textrm{AU}$ from the Sun, the observed values of the $\\alpha$-proton temperature ratio, $\\theta_{\\alpha p} \\equiv T_\\alpha\\,/\\,T_p$ has a complex, bimodal distribution. This study applied a simple model for the radial evolution of $\\theta_{\\alpha p}$ to these data to compute expected values of $\\theta_{\\alpha p}$ at $r=0.1\\ \\textrm{AU}$. These inferred $\\theta_{\\alpha p}$-values have no trace of the bimodality seen in the $\\theta_{\\alpha p}$-values measured at $r=1.0\\ \\textrm{AU}$ but are instead consistent with the actions of the known mechanisms for $\\alpha$-particle p...

We investigate the decay of magnetic and kinetic energies behind IP shocks with motivation to find a relaxation time when downstream turbulence reaches a usual solarwind value. We start with a case study that introduces computation techniques and quantifies a contribution of kinetic fluctuations to the general energy balance. This part of the study is based on high-time (31 ms) resolution plasma data provided by the Spektr-R spacecraft. On the other hand, a statistical part is based on 92 s Wind plasma and magnetic data and its results confirm theoretically established decay laws for kinetic and magnetic energies. We observe the power-law behavior of the energy decay profiles and we estimated the power-law exponents of both kinetic and magnetic energy decay rates as -1.2. We found that the decay of MHD turbulence does not start immediately after the IP shock ramp and we suggest that the proper decay of turbulence begins when a contribution of the kinetic processes becomes negligible. We support this suggestion with a detailed analysis of the decay of turbulence at the kinetic scale.

The electron density of the thermosphere is of paramount importance for radio communications and drag on low altitude satellites, particularly during geomagnetic storms. Transient enhancements of ion velocities and subsequent density and temperature increases frequently occur as a result of storm-driven solarwind electric field fluctuations. Since the Earth's dipole magnetic field is tilted and offset from the center of the planet, significant asymmetries arise that alter the thermospheric response to energy input based upon the time of day of the disturbance. This study utilizes the Global Ionosphere-Thermosphere Model (GITM) to investigate this phenomenon by enhancing the convective electric field for one hour of the day in 22 different simulations. An additional baseline run was conducted with no IMF perturbation. Furthermore, four configurations of Earth's magnetic field were considered, Internal Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF), a perfect dipole, a dipole tilted by 10 degrees, and a tilted and offset dipole. These runs were conducted at equinox when the amount of sunlight falling on the different hemispheres is the same. Two additional runs were conducted at the solstices for comparison. It was found that the most geo-effective times are when the poles are pointed towards the sun. The electron density, neutral density and temperature as well as the winds are explored.

We compare the power output from a year of electricity generation data from one solar thermal plant, two solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays, and twenty Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) wind farms. The analysis shows that solar PV electricity generation is approximately one hundred times more variable at frequencies on the order of 10(-3) Hz than solar thermal electricity generation, and the variability of wind generation lies between that of solar PV and solar thermal. We calculate the cost of variability of the different solar power sources and wind by using the costs of ancillary services and the energy required to compensate for its variability and intermittency, and the cost of variability per unit of displaced CO(2) emissions. We show the costs of variability are highly dependent on both technology type and capacity factor. California emissions data were used to calculate the cost of variability per unit of displaced CO(2) emissions. Variability cost is greatest for solar PV generation at $8-11 per MWh. The cost of variability for solar thermal generation is $5 per MWh, while that of wind generation in ERCOT was found to be on average $4 per MWh. Variability adds ~$15/tonne CO(2) to the cost of abatement for solar thermal power, $25 for wind, and $33-$40 for PV.

We investigate Venus Express observations of magnetic field fluctuations performed systematically in the solarwind at 0.72 Astronomical Units (AU), between 2007 and 2009, during the deep minimum of solar cycle 24. The power spectral densities (PSDs) of the magnetic field components have been computed for time intervals that satisfy the data integrity criteria and have been grouped according to the type of wind, fast and slow, defined for speeds larger and smaller, respectively, than 450 km s{sup −1}. The PSDs show higher levels of power for the fast wind than for the slow. The spectral slopes estimated for all PSDs in the frequency range 0.005–0.1 Hz exhibit a normal distribution. The average value of the trace of the spectral matrix is −1.60 for fast solarwind and −1.65 for slow wind. Compared to the corresponding average slopes at 1 AU, the PSDs are shallower at 0.72 AU for slow wind conditions suggesting a steepening of the solarwind spectra between Venus and Earth. No significant time variation trend is observed for the spectral behavior of both the slow and fast wind.

In some areas of the U.S. transmission constraints are a limiting factor in deploying new wind and concentrating solar power (CSP) plants. Texas is an example of one such location, where the best wind and solar resources are in the western part of the state, while major demand centers are in the east. The low capacity factor of wind is a compounding factor, increasing the relative cost of new transmission per unit of energy actually delivered. A possible method of increasing the utilization of new transmission is to co-locate both wind and concentrating solar power with thermal energy storage. In this work we examine the benefits and limits of using the dispatachability of thermal storage to increase the capacity factor of new transmission developed to access high quality solar and wind resources in remote locations.

When wind or solar energy displace conventional generation, the reduction in emissions varies dramatically across the United States. Although the Southwest has the greatest solar resource, a solar panel in New Jersey displaces significantly more sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter than a panel in Arizona, resulting in 15 times more health and environmental benefits. A wind turbine in West Virginia displaces twice as much carbon dioxide as the same turbine in California. Depending on location, we estimate that the combined health, environmental, and climate benefits from wind or solar range from $10/MWh to $100/MWh, and the sites with the highest energy output do not yield the greatest social benefits in many cases. We estimate that the social benefits from existing wind farms are roughly 60% higher than the cost of the Production Tax Credit, an important federal subsidy for wind energy. However, that same investment could achieve greater health, environmental, and climate benefits if it were differentiated by region.

In collisionless plasmas such as the solarwind, the coupling between plasma constituents and the embedded magnetic field occurs on various temporal and spatial scales, and is primarily responsible for the transfer of energy between waves and particles. Recently, it was shown that the transfer of energy between solarwind plasma particles and waves is governed by a new and unique relationship: the ratio between the magnetosonic energy and the plasma frequency is constant, E ms/ω pl ˜ ℏ*. This paper examines the variability and substantial departure of this ratio from ℏ* observed at ˜1 au, which is caused by a dispersion of fast magnetosonic (FMS) waves. In contrast to the efficiently transferred energy in the fast solarwind, the lower efficiency of the slow solarwind can be caused by this dispersion, whose relation and characteristics are derived and studied. In summary, we show that (i) the ratio E ms/ω pl transitions continuously from the slow to the fast solarwind, tending toward the constant ℏ* (ii) the transition is more efficient for larger thermal, Alfvén, or FMS speeds; (iii) the fast solarwind is almost dispersionless, characterized by quasi-constant values of the FMS speed, while the slow wind is subject to dispersion that is less effective for larger wind or magnetosonic speeds; and (iv) the constant ℏ* is estimated with the best known precision, ℏ* ≈ (1.160 ± 0.083) × 10-22 Js.

Full Text Available Using a classification of the near-Earth solarwind into three basic flow types: (1 High-speed streams associated with coronal holes at the Sun; (2 Slow, interstream solarwind; and (3 Transient flows originating with coronal mass ejections (CMEs at the Sun, including interplanetary CMEs and the associated upstream shocks and post-shock regions, we determine the drivers of geomagnetic storms of various size ranges based on the Kp index and the NOAA “G” criteria since 1964, close to the beginning of the space era, to 2011, encompassing more than four solar cycles (20–23. We also briefly discuss the occurrence of storms since the beginning of the Kp index in 1932, in the minimum before cycle 17. We note that the extended low level of storm activity during the minimum following cycle 23 is without precedent in this 80-year interval. Furthermore, the “typical” numbers of storm days/cycle quoted in the standard NOAA G storm table appear to be significantly higher than those obtained from our analysis, except for the strongest (G5 storms, suggesting that they should be revised downward.

In this paper we calculate the turbulent heating rates in the solarwind using the Kolmogorov-like MHD turbulence phenomenology with Kolmogorov's constants calculated by {\\it Verma and Bhattacharjee }[1995b,c]. We find that the turbulent heating can not account for the total heating of the nonAlfv\\'enic streams in the solarwind. We show that dissipation due to thermal conduction is also a potential heating source. Regarding the Alfv\\'enic streams, the predicted turbulent heating rates using the constants of {\\it Verma and Bhattacharjee }[1995c] are higher than the observed heating rates; the predicted dissipation rates are probably overestimates because Alfv\\'enic streams have not reached steady-state. We also compare the predicted turbulent heating rates in the solar corona with the observations; the Kolmogorov-like phenomenology predicts dissipation rates comparable to the observed heating rates in the corona [{\\it Hollweg, }% 1984], but Dobrowoly et al.'s generalized Kraichnan model yields heating rates m...

Astrophysical ices are exposed to different radiation fields including photons, electrons and ions. The latter stem from interstellar cosmic rays (CR), the solar and stellar winds, shock waves or are trapped in the magnetospheres of giant planets. We briefly discuss the physics of energy deposition by ion ir radiation in condensed matter and experimental methods to study the induced effects. We then present results on radiation effects such as sputtering, amorphisation and compaction, dissociation of molecules, formation of new molecular species after radiolysis and by implantation of ions. The formation and radio-resistance of organic molecules, related to the question of the initial conditions for the emergence of life, are briefly discussed. This review is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather focusses on recent findings, with special emphasis on experiments with heavy multiply charged ion beams. These experiments aim in particular at simulating the effects of CRs on icy grains in dense molecular clouds, and on the formation of molecules on icy bodies in the Solar System.

Simple estimates of the number of Coulomb collisions experienced by the interplanetary plasma to the point of observation, i.e., the “collisional age”, can be usefully employed in the study of non-thermal features of the solarwind. Usually these estimates are based on local plasma properties at the point of observation. Here we improve the method of estimation of the collisional age by employing solutions obtained from global three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics simulations. This enables evaluation of the complete analytical expression for the collisional age without using approximations. The improved estimation of the collisional timescale is compared with turbulence and expansion timescales to assess the relative importance of collisions. The collisional age computed using the approximate formula employed in previous work is compared with the improved simulation-based calculations to examine the validity of the simplified formula. We also develop an analytical expression for the evaluation of the collisional age and we find good agreement between the numerical and analytical results. Finally, we briefly discuss the implications for an improved estimation of collisionality along spacecraft trajectories, including Solar Probe Plus.

The identification of solar-wind sources is an important question in solar physics. The existing solar-wind models ( e.g., the Wang-Sheeley-Arge model) provide the approximate locations of the solarwind sources based on magnetic field extrapolations. It has been suggested recently that plasma outflows observed at the edges of active regions may be a source of the slow solarwind. To explore this we analyze an isolated active region (AR) adjacent to small coronal hole (CH) in July/August 2009. On 1 August, Hinode/EUV Imaging Spectrometer observations showed two compact outflow regions in the corona. Coronal rays were observed above the active-region coronal hole (ARCH) region on the eastern limb on 31 July by STEREO-A/EUVI and at the western limb on 7 August by CORONAS- Photon/TESIS telescopes. In both cases the coronal rays were co-aligned with open magnetic-field lines given by the potential field source surface model, which expanded into the streamer. The solar-wind parameters measured by STEREO-B, ACE, Wind, and STEREO-A confirmed the identification of the ARCH as a source region of the slow solarwind. The results of the study support the suggestion that coronal rays can represent signatures of outflows from ARs propagating in the inner corona along open field lines into the heliosphere.

Fast (>700 km s(-1)) and slow (~400 km s(-1)) winds stream from the Sun, permeate the heliosphere and influence the near-Earth environment. While the fast wind is known to emanate primarily from polar coronal holes, the source of the slow wind remains unknown. Here we identify possible sites of origin using a slow solarwind source map of the entire Sun, which we construct from specially designed, full-disk observations from the Hinode satellite, and a magnetic field model. Our map provides a full-Sun observation that combines three key ingredients for identifying the sources: velocity, plasma composition and magnetic topology and shows them as solarwind composition plasma outflowing on open magnetic field lines. The area coverage of the identified sources is large enough that the sum of their mass contributions can explain a significant fraction of the mass loss rate of the solarwind.